On one side, there is Qihoo's 360 which is known for its
free anti-virus software. On the other side, there is Tencent which
has the most popular chat service (QQ) in China.

On September 27, 360 released a "privacy protection tool"
to its users claiming that it can "monitor and/or record the snooping
activities in other software." The monitoring was directed right at QQ.

According to 360, Tencent's QQ chat software scans a large
number of files on people's computers that have nothing to do with the chat
function, including the "My Files" item on the desktop, web browsing
history, played videos and even online payment software. Furthermore,
the scanning is directed by the server and takes place in the background
without the user being aware.

Tencent countered that 360 misread the purpose of QQ's
safety checks on executable files as privacy intrusion. For example,
online payment software are provided by financial companies and do not
contain any personal information such as account numbers or passwords.

360 disgreed with Tencent's explanation: "Previous to
this, nobody was even aware that QQ ran safety checks. QQ did
everything on the sly: starting the safety check, selecting documents to be
scanned and making the final decision.

On October 14, Tencent sued 360 for unfair competition.
On October 18, 360 filed a countersuit.

Who is right? Or who is "more" right? The
controversy is over whether QQ is scanning the documents solely to check
safety, whether QQ needed user consent beforehand and who owns the right to
monitor software. All these issues will be answered in court.

"As an ordinary Internet user, we are glad to see these
companies expose each other's faults. This is the only way that they
can hold each other in checks and balances. At present, we do not have
effective supervision in this area. We really need some software that
truly protects our privacy."

Process Monitor is a Microsoft tool for monitoring
computer processes. I downloaded Process Monitor version 2.93 and I
tested QQ, MSN, Ali Wangwang, Feixun and other chat tools. After I
launched each program, I did not do anything with it because I wanted to see
if it will surreptitiously peek at private documents on the computer hard
disk.

Process Monitor showed that not only did QQ automatically
scan many programs and document unrelated to chat function (such as the "My
Files" folder), it even checked the browser history (including the visited
web pages, blogs, mailbox usage, temporary cookies, etc.). Afterwards,
QQ generated a vast amount of Internet file transfers which probably means
that the information was uploaded to the central servers. Within a
mere ten seconds, it accessed almost 10,000 items! Meanwhile, MSN and
other chat tools only accessed its own program files and related system
files.

The list of programs or files that QQ had checked according
to Process Monitor

According to both Process Monitor and 360, within ten
minutes of initiating the QQ chat program, a quick scan of the computer is
made for software on a pre-set "Super Black List" consisting of 685
programs, including chat, games, download, video, browser, character entry,
stock, online television, email, electronic books and system tools from
well-known software providers such as Shengda, Sogou, Thunder, Blizzard,
etc.

On October 26, at the Pingdingshan Academy (Henan), a
disconsolate student sits in his "dormitory." This big unfurnished
classroom had been converted into a temporary bedless dormitory.
Luggage cases were scattered all over the floor, and the blankets/mattresses
were laid down over a thin board on the floor. A cable traversed the
room, allowing the dripping laundry to hang and dry.

To study, the students use their 'beds' as chairs and
their knees as desks. A female student said: "I never imagined that
this is how it turned out. Who would have thought? I told my
high school classmates that I am sleeping on the floor. They were very
much astonished. I get this sense of listlessness, like someone
without a home." Another female student said: "I can deal with having
no place to put my things, hang my laundry to dry, do my homework in bed and
sharing two restrooms with more than 100 people. I can deal with that.
But I find it hard to sleep like this at night."

The "dormitory" turned out to be far less than what these
incoming students imagined a university campus should look like. When
will these students move into real dormitories? Nobody knows yet.
The students don't dare tell their parents because they don't want to cause
worry.

Student A: "Conditions here must be unique among
universities all over the world!"
Student B: "This is worse than high school. In high school, we still
have a bed to sleep on. Here we sleep on a board. At night, it
feels chilly even if we use two blankets. I don't dare to tell my
parents. They would worry if I tell them because it is cold at night.
I told them that things are great and we have cupboards and all that.
They don't know that we sleep on the floor."
Student C: "When we came, they said that we would be moving the next week."
Student D: "They said within a month, but they did not give a specific date.
We have not received any more information. This is our second week
here already.

According to information, the more than first tier 60
universities directly under administration the Ministry of Education are not
significantly expanding their student bodies for now. Most of the
expansions take place in the second tier or lower institutions.
Usually, the Provincial Department of Education's Expansion Planning Office
decides how many students each institution should recruit each year.
At the Pingdingshan Academy, student recruitment had been increasing at a
10% annual rate. There were more than 6,200 new students this year.
Tuition covers only one-fourth of the operational costs with the balance
coming in the form of subsidies.

What if the state does not provide enough subsidies?
The university will have to find money from somewhere. They can get
bank loans, which will have to be repaid eventually. At the
Pingdingshan Academy, they attracted private investors who construct school
buildings in return for a fixed-rate return on that investment. The
dormitory buildings were planned that way. The average cost of
construction was about 4 to 5 million yuan, and the school proposes to repay
the investors 600,000 yuan back per year over a course of 20 years.
However, the investors misjudged the construction schedule and there were
also more rain delays this year than normal. So this is where things
stand.

The Zhaojiadui village can no longer be said to be a
village. Where several hundred homes used to stand, there is just an
empty lot with one house standing in the middle. The lot is surrounded
by walls more than 2 meters high with no vehicle entrance. Zhao Xing's
family is the only one left, consisting of Zhao Xing, his wife and his
83-year-old mother.

Zhao Xing acknowledges that he is a "nail householder."
At the end of 2009, public notices were posted that the village was to be
rebuilt. He was very happy because he thought that living conditions
in the village had been poor. But he expected to receive adequate
compensation. Absent that, he became a "nail householder."

Zhao Xing said: "This year, electricity and water were
frequently cut off. Each time, I had to go and fix it myself."

At around 4am on October 14, the family of three was
sleeping at home. Suddenly someone used bricks to smash their windows.
They woke up and tried to go outside to see. But their front door was
locked with steel bars from the outside. They had to call for friends
to open the door, which was splashed with feces.

At 9am on October 18, Zhao Xing went out on an errand.
When he got back at 10am, he found an excavator digging a moat around his
house. The excavation continued until through the afternoon.
There was a moat more than 3 meters wide and more than two meters deep
around his house. There was rain for a few days afterwards, so that
the moat was filled with water.

Zhao Xing said that a friend brought him two long wooden
boards. This allowed the family to enter and leave the house.
But the excavators came back and dug even deeper. His 83-year-old
mother could no longer make that trip.

At 4am on October 27, someone came and broke the window
glass again. This was probably done by a gun which left bullet holes
in the glass. Zhao went up the roof and observed several figures
moving around. He threw bricks at them and called the police.

The Zhao family used to cook with an electric stove.
Ever since electricity and water were cut off, they now cook with liquefied
gas. Friends brought them several large bags of rice. Zhao's
daughter get their meat and vegetables from a restaurant. Zhao gets
water from the gas station. Each time, he carries two plastic
containers of water weighing 25 kilograms each. To save water, they
wash their face first, then use that water to wash their feet, then use that
water to flush the toilet. Bathing and laundry are luxuries that they
cannot afford. When it rained a few days ago, the Zhao family had
containers taken out on the roof to capture rainwater.

Since there is no electricity, consumer electronic items
such as television, refrigerator, etc have been idle. The Zhaos use
candles for light at at night. Zhao has two batteries for his mobile
phone, one of which is always being re-charged at a friend's place while the
other is in use.

In addition, there is that wall surrounding the lot.
There should be a one-meter or so gap that allowed people to enter and exit.
But a pile of rubble more than 2 meters high has been placed there. So
the Zhao family had to climb up the rubble pile to enter and exit the lot.

Okay, so this is an outrageous news story. What
happens after it got published and received wide comments from all over China?

Last evening, Zhao Xing's son-in-law called the reporter
to say that the excavators have come back to fill in the moat and restore
everything to original conditions. Our reporter went to the scene and
obtained that an excavator was filling out a road several meters wide.
According to Zhao Xing, at just past 5pm, the demolitionists, the investors
and the Wuhua district government workers brought presents to his home and
apologize to the family. They also promised to fill up the moat and
restore electricity/water overnight.

In early morning on October 27, actress Hao Lei posted
several dozen microblog posts that were rants against "Henan persons."
The microblog posts included a lot of obscene language, such as "Your
mother's (cunt)," "act like a fucking fool," "ignorant retarded cunt," etc.
Then she deleted those posts. But these posts were noticed by netizens
and drew an Internet firestorm.

You! Must apologize to the people of Henan

On October 28, the Henan-based newspaper <Dongfang Jinbao>
published an editorial piece entitled "You! Must apologize to the people of
Henan." The editorial said: "As a local Henan media, we express our
strong ire over the words and actions of Hao Lei during this incident.
While we defend the freedom of expression of all persons, we must also
defend our own dignity. We find it unacceptable for someone to
maintain silence after having hurt the feelings of the people of Henan.
Deleting all the microblog posts does not mean that Hao Lei is sorry.
It only shows that she is a coward who refuses to accept responsibility.
Here, we solemnly demand that Hao Lei apologize formally for her actions on
October 27, 2010 that seriously hurt the feelings of the people of Henan."

Internet opinion was divided over this editorial.

One netizen who supported this editorial wrote: "As a
Henan person, I accept having <Dongfang Jinbao> represent my voice.
This is also an opinion shared by the majority of the Henan netizens.
A public figure must accept responsibility for her public speech. The
media has the duty to supervise. Never mind any talk about
journalistic responsibility, because a local Henan media ought to represent
the wishes of the majority of the people of Henan."

But another netizen demurred: "<Dongfang Jinbao> is using
a public media tool to apply pressure on a minor actress. This actress
is not exactly a bigwig." Still another netizen wrote: "It was wrong
for Hao Lei to curse out Henan persons. But this editorial showed that
this newspaper lacks tolerance and self-confidence. There are so many
tragic and miserable incidents in China, but the newspaper had never been so
angry and grim as over this case." A netizen wrote: "Hao Lei curses
the people of Henan, and suddenly the media could not sit still. They
worked righteously to defend the honor of the people of Henan. What
kind of spirit is this? This is the fearless spirit to seek out a
subject for dinner conversation, this is the selfless spirit to be concerned
about people's livelihood and ethnic solidarity, this is the
self-sacrificing spirit to bring about a new wave of criticisms and
self-criticisms all over China." Another netizen commented: "The Henan
people and their media have successfully pushed those sympathize with them
over to Hao Lei's side."

Early morning on October 29, Hao Lei commented on this
incident for the first time on her blog. The two blog posts that
together contained more than 2,000 words showed confused logic and vehement
speech. She wrote: "I wanted to curse people out tonight just as I
wanted to curse the other night! I should not have transferred all my
rage against everybody in Henan. Although some people have deeply hurt
me, I will not make any so-called apology! As for those several
individuals, let me tell you that I will fight you to my death!" She
also wrote: "I give up! Many friends are sending me text messages
because they are afraid that I might commit suicide. But do you know
that my acting is also my life. I have made all the preparations to
give up my acting career!" In the last paragraph, Hao Lei worked
herself up to a climax: "I should not stop at using foul curse words.
I should get a knife and kill them all!"

Why was the normally genteel Hao Lei cursing the people of
Henan on her microblog? This is perplexing. Some netizens think
that she was targeting her ex-husband Li Guangji who is from Henan.
But Li's manager said that this incident has nothing to do with him.

A 23-year-old American student
was jailed on Thursday for four years over the bizarre death of a taxi
driver. Hong Kong-born Kelsey Mudd, who has joint US-Australian citizenship,
was convicted of manslaughter by a jury on late on Wednesday after denying
responsibility for the death of Wong Chi-ming in June last year.

Mudd had been accused of commandeering Wong's taxi and
then embarking on an alcohol-fuelled driving spree before smashing into a
metal fence in the city's financial district, killing the 58-year-old.

The court was told Wong was entangled in a seatbelt and
dragged along before Mudd crashed. Mudd’s blood-alcohol level was five times
the legal limit, the court heard. “You were staggeringly drunk,” Justice
Alan Wright said as he passed sentence, and called Mudd a “substantial and
immediate danger” to passers-by.

Mudd – a student at California State University who was in
Hong Kong volunteering for a charity at the time of the accident - showed no
remorse, the judge said. “You sought to put blame on others,” he added.

The case grabbed headlines after video footage of the
incident emerged showing Mudd inside the taxi with blood splattered on his
face. Jurors also found Mudd guilty of taking a vehicle without authority,
dangerous driving and drink driving.

Michael Mudd maintained his son’s innocence after the
sentencing. “We are very disappointed,” he told reporters. “There was enough
confusion, nobody really knows what happened.” Mudd’s father said the family
would “look at all options available” when asked about appealing the
conviction.

Wong’s older brother, who declined to be identified,
lashed out at the “very light” sentence and called Mudd a “madman”.

Mudd’s lawyer described him as “extremely distressed over
the fact that he is partly responsible for the death of the taxi driver”.
His defence had argued that the amount of alcohol Mudd consumed and a head
injury he sustained prior to the fatal accident meant he was unlikely to
have even remembered the incident, reports said.

Australian student Kelsey Lord
Michael Mudd was sentenced yesterday to four years and three months in jail
for causing the death of a taxi driver - with the judge criticizing him for
showing no remorse.

A jury convicted Hong Kong-born Mudd, 23, of the
manslaughter of Wong Chi-ming, 58, by a five to two majority in the Court of
First Instance on Wednesday. He was also unanimously found guilty of taking
a vehicle without authority, dangerous driving and driving over the legal
alcohol limit.

Mudd, who holds American, Australian and British
citizenship, is a student at California State University.

Justice Alan Wright said the defendant's behavior after
the collision showed he was "staggering drunk." His blood alcohol level was
more than five times over the limit. He said the student showed no remorse,
regret or sorrow over the incident. But he took into consideration that Mudd
did not intend to drive on the night of the incident and is a young man
still pursuing his studies.

In mitigation, Mudd's counsel, Christopher Young, said the
defendant was only partly responsible. If Mudd had not been left alone in
the taxi, the incident would not have happened, he argued. "The defendant
had no excuse for being drunk. His drunken state must have been evident to
the driver, who nevertheless got out of the car," said Young, adding that
"the defendant did not recollect what occurred." He said Mudd did not intend
to drive the vehicle when he got into the taxi as a passenger.

The court heard that on June 27 last year, Mudd tried to
seize control of the taxi from Wong on Connaught Road near City Hall in
Central. Wong tried to get out of the cab to pull Mudd out but was still
strapped in by his seat belt. Wong was dragged as his taxi rammed into a
metal fence dividing Connaught Road. The vehicle hit two other taxis before
stopping, and Wong was left lying in the road. While paramedics were
attending to him, Mudd suddenly drove off in the wrong direction, missing
several oncoming cars before hitting another taxi.

Outside court, the eldest brother of the dead driver
slammed the sentence as too light. "I am furious. How could he be jailed for
such a short period for killing my brother?" he said. "He simply put the
blame on my brother. As a taxi driver, he could not have refused to let [Mudd]
get in the taxi."

The brother, also a night-shift taxi driver, said there
were times when he met drunk passengers who tried to grab his wheel, and it
was difficult to deal with such situations. He said his brother had been a
taxi driver for 30 years and is survived by his wife and two children in
their late 20s.

Mudd's father, Michael Mudd, said: "I'm very disappointed
with the outcome. We think there was enough confusion that night that nobody
really knows what happened and that he was not given the benefit of the
doubt." He said he will consider all possible legal options. Mudd's mother,
Tasha White, said her son is sorry. "He's very sad about the taxi driver,
what happened to him, but he has no memory of what happened," she said.

On the Chinese Internet, three Japanese female pop idols
of Chinese descent were said to shock Japan by posing for photos in front of
a "Defend China's Diaoyutai Islet" banner. (See "Angel
Girl")

I have lived in Japan for many years, and I have never
heard of any Japanese female pop idol group going by the name "Angel Girl."
I asked many other people and they haven't heard of it either. Nobody
in the media business know them, and none of the several dozen
Chinese-language newspapers in Japan reported on this allegedly very popular
female group. Chinese persons and students in Japan do not know "Angel
Girl." There is nothing on the Internet about "Angel Girl," especially
not about their audio-visual work.

Many Chinese netizens are wondering: How come there is no
information about this Japanese pop idol group "Angel Girl?" At Baidu, the
post bar "Angel Girl" was seen to appear first on 2010-10-20 22:46 by
someone named "Love Angel Girl The Most." At 2010-10-21 20:20, "Love
Angel Girl The Most" added "How are you, administrator? I am the post
bar operator for 'Angel Girl'. I am updating this bar by swapping a
photo of the group members with one that has higher resolution. Please
approve this request. I have not changed any of the text."

According to the provided information, "The three members
are of Chinese descent. Although they have only started out recently
and have not received much exposure in mainstream Japanese television, they
are already popular all over Japan. They are highly beloved by otaku
guys who consider them a new generation of guy-killing female group."

What does it mean to be "of Chinese descent"? This
is being deliberately vague -- why kind of visas do these Chinese people
hold in Japan? "Not much exposure in mainstream Japanese television"
means that they have never been seen on television? Or maybe they can
be seen only on those special small pay channels?

According to the provided information, "the group made its
initial appearance in May 2010. They were assembled by a famous
Japanese fashion magazine group and a recording company over three years.
They are managed by the joint venture company Kitano HKOT Business Group.
Their new album <Angel Girl> and their photo album <Angel> are expected to
appear in time for Christmas this year. Because the members are of
Chinese descent and they only present 'Chinese goods' (such as electronics,
beauty products, gourmet food) to their fans through their microblog, they
are excluded from mainstream media."

Wouldn't you like to know which fashion magazine group it
was? Or which recording company it was? Is the Kitano HKOT
Business Group a small investment company that some Chinese person set up in
order to obtain a business visa? If their new album <Angel Girl> and
their photo album <Angel> won't be released until Christmas, does this mean
that they have released nothing so far? And does it mean that these
three girls are just spokeswomen/saleswomen representing Chinese products?

According to the provided information, "All the printed
and electronic magazines of the entire magazine group promoted and marketed
this group. This technique of continual information drew the attention
of Japanese otaku guys. The young, fresh and sweet looks of Angel Girl
overwhelmed uncountable number of Japanese otaku guys. Their photo
album set a record of 1 million downloads at one website in one day.
In the latest Top 10 Female Goddesses For Otaku Guys, they were the top
vote-getters."

What is the name of the magazine group? Why can't
they say which magazines? Which website recorded the 1 million
downloads? If they can overwhelm otaku guys by photos alone, does it
mean that these are just Chinese girls selling their looks? Who
decided the top 10 female goddesses? Did the three girls vote
themselves in?

According to the provided information, "The results of the
<Annual Top 10 Female Goddesses For Otaku Guys> was just released last
weekend after voting over the previous month. The young and fresh
Angel Girl group and AKB48 shared the top honors ... the event was sponsored
by a certain Japanese magazine and a certain social networking website for
the purpose of gauging new trends among male Internet users. According
to the voting result, the top 10 female goddesses are: Angel Girl, AKB48,
Erika Sawajiri, Beckii Cruel, Nozomi Sasaki, Maki Horikita, Lin Chiling,
Sola Aoi, Jolin Tsai, Ueto Aya. ..."

The names of the sponsoring Japanese magazines and the
social networking website are not given. AKB48 is very well-known in Japan.
How can three Chinese women who have never been on television and who don't
have any audio-visual product be a match for AKB48? The Japanese AV
star Sola Aoi? Nobody can believe that these three Chinese women can
go ahead of Sola Aoi? Certain Chinese girls are popular with the older
Japanese men in the Shinjuku district sex trade because they charge cheaper
than Japanese girls.

The provided information also described the three females
as: Annie Yang (Beijing) born 1987-10-20; Amy Cao (Taiwan) born 1992-1-20;
Angela Nie (Changsha) born 1990-6-10.

These three members claim to be of Chinese descent.
They do not say that they are Chinese persons living in Japan. But
since they are Japanese, how come they only have English names but no
Japanese names? Are there really three such women in Japan? How
come neither the Japanese people nor the Chinese people living in Japan have
ever heard of such a female pop idol group?

This poorly constructed fake news is being treated as real
by Chinese persons who don't know the truth. But now even the Japanese
media who monitor the Chinese Internet are beginning to pay attention to
this piece of fake news.

First it was a fishing boat, then a panda. Now it’s film
festival name tags.

In the latest chapter of the deepening diplomatic drama
between China and Japan, China has announced that it will no longer
participate in the 23rd Tokyo International Film Festival after controversy
erupted over the naming of the event’s Taiwanese delegation.

Jiang Ping, head of a Chinese group that planned to attend
the film festival–which kicked off this weekend–said China would pull out of
the event because fellow participant Taiwan refused to change its name to
“China’s Taiwan” or “Chinese Taipei.” Mr. Jiang’s insistence came at the
last minute Saturday, and prevented a number of Taiwanese and Chinese
celebrities from making their star-studded appearances on the
environmentally friendly green carpet.

[...]

Just in case observers got confused about the target of
China’s ire, Jiang, who is also deputy director-general of SARFT’s film
bureau, emphasized to state media that the blame lay not with the Taiwan
festival delegation, but with the Japanese organizers: “It has nothing to do
with our Taiwan compatriots. It is the fault of the Tokyo organizers,” he
told the Global Times.

But Taiwan’s Central News Agency reported that Chen
Chih-kuan, the head of the Taiwanese delegation, was surprised at Beijing’s
decision. The island had simply applied for the event under the name
“Taiwan” as it had done without incident in years past, he said. Taiwanese
officials called the move by Beijing “rude.” “Obviously, the leader of the
Chinese delegation, Jiang, made a serious mistake. We have participated in
film festivals, including the Tokyo [Film Festival] under the name of Taiwan
for years,” Premier Wu Den-yih said.

CNA reported that Taiwanese actress Vivian Hsu broke into
tears during a press conference Sunday in Tokyo while discussing the
Mainland’s move, which prevented her and others from making their carpet
debut.

Here is the television news footage:

At 0:26, Vivian Hsu is dabbing at the tears in her eyes. At 0:48,
Vivian Hsu is attending an evening reception at which she explained that she
cried earlier because she had misgivings on behalf of the Taiwanese actors
and actresses. She said: "So I remembered that yesterday I, Shiao-tian,
director Dou and Chun-ning were very much looking forward to walking on the
green carpet. Then I couldn't hold myself back. I am strongly
emotional."

1. This letter was prepared and released at the behest of
the principal, Ms. Vivian Hsu.

2. With respect to Ms. Vivian Hsu shedding tears at the
Tokyo Film Festival, the huge amount of media coverage has caused distress
for her. This lawyer makes the following clarifications on behalf of
Ms. Vivian Hsu:

1. Ms. Vivian Hsu shed tears at the Tokyo Film Festival
because of personal concerns over the health condition of a family member as
well as the work pressures of working alone in a foreign country. It
is not related to any other factor. All interpretations and views of
the media and netizens do not represent her own intent.

2. Recently, certain people have pretended to speak as Ms.
Vivian Hsu on the Internet. This was not herself speaking.

3. Ms. Vivian Hsu indicates that wherever she may be and
whatever she may say, she only wants to do her work well as a performance
artist. As such, she holds no political position.

4. Concerning the insulting language employed by certain
netizens in recent days against herself, Ms. Vivian Hsu felt sad and hurt.
Ms. Vivian Hsu would like to see the whole matter come to a halt.
Please do not spend more energy and please do not say unreasonable things.
Ms. Vivian Hsu reserves the legal right to seek redress against personal
attacks.

5. Lastly, Ms. Vivian Hsu thanks everybody for caring
about her. She hopes that people will focus their attention on her
work and that would be an affirmation of Ms. Vivian Hsu.

(Taipei
Times) Vivian Hsu's tears became fodder for debate on the Web.
By Chang Mao-sen. October 27, 2010.

Taiwanese actress Vivian Hsu (徐若瑄), who was in tears
following a row in which members of Taiwan’s delegation to the Tokyo
International Film Festival were unable to walk the “green carpet” because
of Chinese opposition, quickly became the subject of a spat between fans on
both sides of the Taiwan Strait who have split into pro-Hsu and anti-Hsu
camps.

Having wept openly at the opening ceremony, Hsu made
several entries on her microblog to express her frustration afterward. Hsu
said she “wanted to cry but had no tears left” and that “some things that
happen just can’t be helped.”

Taiwanese actress Shu Qi (舒淇) attempted to comfort Hsu,
saying: “There are too many things we’d like to solve but can’t. If you’re
tired, go to sleep. Your health, at least, is one thing you can make sure
of.”

Controversy brewed over Hsu’s tears as Chinese and
Taiwanese fans argued it out in comments posted on her blog. The pro-Hsu
netizens sympathized with her and other members of the Taiwanese delegation
for their frustration, while the other camp accused the actress of playing
to the cameras for publicity.

The controversy also drew attention on China’s Web portal
Baidu, with more than 80 percent of Chinese posters saying they would
boycott any performance by Hsu in China. Some Chinese posters even blamed
the festival’s Japanese hosts for the incident.

“It’s the Japanese up to their tricks again, creating
divisions between Taiwan and mainland China,” one poster said, while another
commented: “The Japanese are stirring up trouble on purpose, but the
Taiwanese are dancing to their tune.”

Some even suggested that the argument over what name the
Taiwanese delegation would use had something to do with the territorial
dispute between China and Japan over the Diaoyutai Islands (釣魚台) and that
Taiwan was acting like a gun in Japan’s hand.

A "Driving While Intoxicated" traffic accident that led to
one death and one injury on the Hebei University campus began a firestorm on
the Chinese Internet. This is seemingly incomprehensible. But
upon further analysis, it is quite understandable and logical.

At first, this seems perplexing but not completely
ridiculous: In Baoding city, Hebei province, the son of a public security
bureau deputy director was an intern after graduation, but he was already
driving a 250,000 yuan car. While intoxicated by alcohol, he drove the
car at what eyewitnesses said was at least 40 kmph speed in a 5 kmph zone
and hit two persons, one of whom died while the other sustained injuries.
This is not normal, but this is something that regular people can understand
within their common knowledge.

But what happens next is not regular people can
understand. After this 22-year-old guy hit the pedestrians, he did not
stop to render assistance. Instead he drove away not once, but twice.
The first time, he got out of the car and saw that the victims were lying
immobilized on the ground. He did not offer any assistance. He
got back into his car and drove away. The second time, he came back
down the same road and did not even stop. When the young man was
intercepted by security guards at the university entrance gate, he howled
arrogantly: "My dad is Li Gang."

When Li Gang's son caused this disaster which resulted in
one death and one injury, nobody else is involved. The young man did
not intend to kill anyone. Eventually, the young man will accept
responsibility for his act, his parents will pay compensation to the victims
and their families and the young man will probably be punished mildly under
the law.

But the words "My dad is Li Gang" suddenly created a
butterfly effect that led to a major social crisis in a way that is uniquely
Chinese. I believe that any serious social scientist must take a
research interest in this case; and any serious politician must be concerned
about the deep social crisis created by this minor incident and the
implications for the future of China.

Here I want to discuss some of my viewpoints about "Car
Accident Gate."

Firstly, I think that the quick intercession of CCTV into
this case failed to stem the rushing public opinion tide. Instead,
they unwisely followed up on the case along the same vein. Unless CCTV
makes a 180 degree turn, it will have no credibility when it covers similar
incidents in the future.

Frankly, I can understand that the CCTV editors wanted to
calm down hatred among the masses who don't know the truth against the
arrogance of the children of government officials. Therefore, they
were willing to dedicate precious on-air minutes to show the Li father and
son crying in tears and being contrite. They did this in an attempt to
cool down the public opinion storm. But they made a fatal mistake
here: they ignored the need for the family members of the victims to express
their feelings, including the likelihood that they may accept the sincere
apologies of the victimizer and his father. This was short-sighted and
unwise, because the opportunity to get to the victims' side of the story now
belonged to civilian dissidents and non-mainstream media. In so doing,
it almost completely gave up its credibility and fairness in covering the
case.

Next, this is an age in which the Internet is everywhere.
Any public incident or public figure which draws the interests of netizens
and spectators will almost inevitably be subject to human flesh search.
This meant that the true face of Li Gang was inevitably going to be
uncovered, and it was just a simple matter of counting down to when he
stumbles to his inexorable fall.

Let us look at the evolving development of this case.
A traffic accident in a corner of the Hebei University campus was magnified
into a huge negative event because the driver said "My dad is Li Gang."
The rapidity created a news effect, as many media ran in-depth
investigations and netizens conducted human flesh searches. This
caused Li Gang and his social background to be revealed. This
development makes sense. Not only did it caused the vast wealth of Li
Gang to be made known, but the suspected plagiarism of the Hebei University
president also came out in public.

With respect to the five houses owned by Li Gang and his
son, if the son did not say "My dad is Li Gang" after causing the accident,
then the ownership of this shocking amount of wealth will probably be a
personal secret that would not come into public view.

Finally, we find that when a minor traffic accident inside
a university campus began to draw public attention, the main story was no
longer about the simple issue of punishing the young driver. These
grassroots netizens who are certain that "all government officials are
corrupt" are waiting to watch CCTV ask Li Gang about his five houses whose
addresses and types have been identified. How did he procure those
houses? If CCTV is going all the way, they might also asked that
extremely stupid Hebei University president about his plagiarism case which
had been previously glossed over.

In summary, this minor traffic accident on the Hebei
University campus is a classical butterfly effect. It may now be at
the point where the principals must be severely punished in order to staunch
the tide of public opinion.

If not, I predict that the persons behind this messy "Car
Accident Gate" will inevitably pay a huge price some day: in the form of
government officials and their family members continuing to be shameless and
arrogant, destroying the minimal legitimacy of the governing class in our
country.

[Lie
to Me is an American television series that premiered on the Fox
network on January 21, 2009. In the show, Dr. Cal Lightman (Tim Roth) and
his colleagues in The Lightman Group accept assignments from third parties
(commonly local and federal law enforcement), and assist in investigations,
reaching the truth through applied psychology: interpreting microexpressions,
through the Facial Action Coding System, and body language.]

Detail #1. Li Gang's on deliberately knitted his
brows

Lightman said: "A person will have this expression when
they are sad, frustrated, pained and guilty. Fewer than 15% of all
persons can fake this expression. Any expression that can be sustained more
than 10 or five seconds is likely fake."

In the video, Li Gang's son knitted his brow several times
(some of them for more than 10 seconds). You can even feel that he was
trying to sustain this expression in order to exhibit "pain" and
"self-recrimination." A person who feels genuine pain and guilty may
knit his brow, but Li Gang's son needed to use his muscles to achieve this
expression.

This was very much a failure, because when people saw this
expression, they don't feel sympathy and pity. Instead, they feel
uneasy, even awkwardness. Your inner reactions have not deceived you.

Detail #2. Rubbing the eyes

In behavioral psychology, rubbing the eyes signals
unwillingness. Even a natural-born blind person will spontaneously run
his eyes when asked to do something against his will. In the video, Li
Gang's son rubbed his eyes hard in order to show that he was crying hard.
This key action thoroughly showed his hypocrisy. In "Lie to Me," there
were many examples of people using actions to mask their true expression,
resulting in the opposite result. Rubbing the eyes is a classical fake
action.

Detail #3. Voice and tone

When people lie, they seldom know how to say it in the
correct order. Therefore they will have scripted the lies beforehand.

When Li Gang's son spoke, he kept acknowledging his guilt.
However, you can feel that his words had been scripted beforehand. His
expression showed that he was searching the script on how to tell the lies.

In "Lie to Me," repetition of words and raising of tone
both indicate lying.

According to Li Gang's son, "I did not plan on saying an
apology." But when he said it on camera, his tone changed suddenly.
Because he wanted to tell his lies out as quickly as possible, his tone kept
rising and his body pose became somewhat unnatural. He only wanted to
finish as quickly as possible. Thus, he was breaking down when he
began to say "I very much blame myself ..." Most people will only
silently acknowledge their guilty. Li Gang's son went in the opposite
direction. His unnatural sobs also seemed too crafted.

Detail #4. Head lowered, eyes closed

People who plan to lie know that their eyes may betray
them. So they are interviewed on camera, they will choose not to face
or look into the camera. Li Gang's son sued the easiest and safest
method -- he closed his eyes, he knitted his brow, he cried, he sobbed --
these are the expressions of pain and guilty that people are familiar with.
But his micro-actions and micro-expressions betrayed him.

I believe that Li Gang's son felt no contrition after he
drove his car and hit two pedestrians at Hebei University. To this
date, he has felt no remorse. He believes that his powerful father Li
Gang will fix things for him.

Detail #5. The sudden changes in expression

Comrade Li Gang used public relations tactics to try to
win public sympathy. He told his son to put on a show in the detention
center, and he himself gave a media interview. Some people say that
government officials are expert performers in front of television camera.
Actually, Li Gang is no expert because his performance was just as lousy as
his son's.

At first Li Gang held his head bowed and then he sighed.
(Not a long sigh, just a sigh to show tension). Then his head started
to bob slightly. But you should pay attention to the changes in his
expression. At first, he showed no expression But within a few
seconds, he tried to show sorrow and pain! Aren't we too familiar with
this turn of events!! Yes, do you remember the movie <King of Comedy>
in which the director told actor Stephen Chow> to display various
expressions? You can watch carefully yourself and see the similarity
for yourself.

Comrade Li Gang, you got into your role pretty quickly
because you managed to come up with a tearful expression within seconds.
But you climaxed too quickly ... Because this act was hard to sustain,
you had to cover up. The motions of your hands betrayed you!

Lightman said that when someone subconsciously puts a hand
over the mouth, it meant that the person is trying to refrain from lying.

Here is another example:

Detail #6. Bobbing the head around

Do you remember in "Lie to Me" that when someone shakes
his head while he speaks, he is concealing the truth. Li Gang shook
his head many times subconsciously and out of synchronisation with his
words. This shows that he was subconsciously negating his own words.
His brain is reminding him constantly: I am lying, I am not telling the
truth.

Detail #7. Tightly knit brows through applying
facial muscles

Someone who is experiencing genuine inner pain does not
need to exert himself so heavily. Li Gang was not very professional,
because he forgot to knit his brows on several occasions and reverted to a
relaxed condition. Then he took a quick bow and exited from his poor
performance.

We don't need any analysis because everybody can tell that
they were putting on an act in order to win public sympathy. But their
performances were too hurried and pathetic.

On October 3, a Bank of China branch office in Linfen
city, Shanxi province raised the national flag only halfway up the flag
pole. The Linfen Forum administrator Li Dan took a photo and made a
post: "On the morning of October 3, I received a tip from a netizen friend
saying that the national flag in front of the Bank of China's Linfen office
was raised to half past." Li Dan said that he took a taxi with camera
in hand. "I did not even get out of the taxi. I took five photos
in front of the Bank of China entrance." At some time past 10am that
morning, Li Dan picked one photo and posted it on the Linfen Forum.

Later that afternoon, Li Dan called a newspaper reporter
Li Dianping and sent them five photos. At past 11pm that night, Li
Dianping published <What is the Bank of China's Linfen branch lowering the
flag to half mast in national mourning?> along with three of the photos
provided by Li Dan.

On October 4, Li Dan received a call from the Linfen city
Internet management department to tell him as a Yaodu website administrator
to delete that post. "I deleted it immediately." Li Dan also
deleted his own post at the Linfen Forum. But on October 6, another
netizen copied that same post from elsewhere back to the Linfen Forum.
This post was not detected until October 8 when the forum operator Lei
Yunfei deleted it.

On the evening of October 7, China Media Information's
Linfen Forum administrator Fe Qingfeng was detained by the police. On
October 8, another administrator Li Yongreng was taken away by the police
for interrogation, together with his home computer. On that day, Li
Dan sensed that "something is amiss" and decided to leave Linfen. On
the morning of October 9, Li Dan's home computer was taken away by the
police. Linfen Forum administrator Jia Shaofeng was also taken away by
the police. "They took away his computer CPU and three USB devices."
Jia Shaofeng's father said. Linfen Forum operator Lei Yunfei and the
Yaodu Post Bar operator Wang Wei were also taken away by the police.

On October 16, our reporter went to the Bank of China's
Linfen office. According to manager Ren Shiyong, they had received an
inquiry from someone who claimed to be a reporter about why the national
flag in front of the bank was raised only to half mast. "We thought
that it was sabotage, so we filed a police report." When the bank
learned about the Internet posts, they asked the city party publicity
department to delete the posts. They also contacted the various forum
administrators to ask them not to hype up this matter without knowing the
facts yet.

On October 18, the police determined that no "intentional
sabotage" had taken place. The Linfen public security bureau publicity
department director Chen Jing said that several students were playing and
they lowered the flag. These students were not ordered by anyone to do
so, and they are unrelated to the persons who made those Internet posts.

So why were Fei Qingfeng and others arrested? Chen
Jing told our reporter that four persons have been arrested on suspicion of
extortion, but the details cannot be disclosed while the investigation is
still ongoing. Yet, according to Shi Yong, the alleged reporter who
called on October 3 "did not demand money or anything else."

On the morning of October 21, the Linfen (Shanxi) police
held a press conference to made a progress report in the case.
According to the police, the Linfen Forum administrator Li Dan made that
post and then told another administrator Jia Shaofeng: "Get the Bank of
China people to contact us and offer us some goodies." Jia also
published the post at the Baidu Linfen Post Bar and the Baidu Yaodo Post
Bar. Li then called China Media Information's Linfen bureau chief Li
Yongfeng. Then the forum administrator Fei Qingfeng used a specially
purchased phone car with a out-of-province number and pretended to be a
reporter calling the Bank of China's Linfen office. "He threatened the
Bank of China leader to explain how the national flag was a half mast."

The police claimed that Li Yongfeng confessed that their
motive was: "To make the Bank of China come to us to handle the matter by
giving us some goodies, perhaps even money."

"Angel girl" is a new Japanese music group. Its
three members are Chinese-born (Amy is from Beijing, Angela is from Changsha
and Anna is from Taiwan). At present, the "Angel girl" is not very
popular in the mainstream Japanese entertainment field. Besides,
"Angel girl" likes to use microblogs to tell their fans about China-made
electronics, beauty products, etc. This "Chinese subconsciousness" is
rejected in mainstream Japanese media. But their management agency has
sought instead to use new media such as websites and electronic magazines to
package them.

Ever since the renewed conflict over the Diaoyutai Islets,
anti-Japanese demonstrations have exploded in mainland China.
Anti-Japan sentiments abound at websites such as the Strong Nation Forum,
indicating the presence of a subtle interaction between the Chinese
government and its citizens that is both cooperative as well as oppositional
over nationalism ...

Actually, many Hong Kong netizens (including those who are
pan-democrats) do not agree with the anti-Japanese reasoning of mainland
Chinese netizens, with many describing themselves as "moderate anti-Japanese
elements." Most of them regard themselves as "rational critics" and
they label the rabid mainland nationalists as "angry young people" and
"shitty young people." They do their best to show their difference.
Hong Kong netizens like to compare the mainland Chinese angry young man with
the Japanese right wingers. One netizen wrote: "Perhaps the angry
young men and the ultra-rightists are very similar types of people.
They start off from their nationalist sentiments and they attack people
because of who they are and not what the facts are. The only
difference is that they hold different positions on certain things ...
people who don't even want to think for themselves are the same everywhere."
At the Golden Forum which is influential among young people, some users
frequently say: Hong Kong patriots are rational unlike the Strong Nation
Forum whose users are "shitty young men."

The Strong Nation Forum which is a frequent target of
sarcasm from Hong Kong netizens represents the nationalistic sentiments of
certain netizens. They reflect the fact that netizens are dissatisfied
with government policies. They also have functional capabilities, such
as mobilizing anti-Japan activities. Several years ago, the Strong
Nation Forum issued this broad invitation: "The United Nations
Secretary-General Annan has clearly expressed his support for Japan to
become a permanent member of the Security Council. We invite
compatriots to sign on to protest ... even if you won't sign, you can pass
along this message and do your bit."

As a result of the current Diaoyutai incident, there have
been repeated calls to boycott Japanese goods. In 2005, there were
anti-Japan demonstrations in Shenzhen, Beijing and other places.
Recently, there were anti-Japanese activities in Chengdu, Xian, Mianyang and
other cities. All these activities showed the impact of the Internet.
In Hong Kong, even though Internet mobilization has matured especially with
the July 1st marches over the years, there has been no active use of the
Internet to organize anti-Japan demonstrations. Hong Kong netizens are
proud of their highly civilized manners at demonstrations and they regularly
regard anti-Japan demonstrations as unruly and uncivilized, causing more
negativity than positivity: "Those from Hong Kong and Taiwan who want to
defend the Diaoyutai Islets are patriots too. Have the mainlanders
considered what are the effects of their demonstrations? Will their
loud noises make the Japanese government abandon sovereign rights over the
Diaoyutai Islets? They ought to come up with better ways.
Nationalism is not extremism!"

There are many reasons why Hong Kong netizens are cool
towards anti-Japan nationalism. Many people think that the Hong Kong
Internet is monopolized by pan-democrats and therefore lack nationalistic
sentiments, but this is wrong. On the contrary, the Hong Kong
pan-democrat netizens are the ones who are saying that China is inadequately
defending the Diaoyutai Islets.

Hong Kong netizens have not resorted to rabid
anti-Japanese nationalism over the Diaoyutai Islets because regular Hong
Kong citizens have deeper understand of the Japanese position than mainland
netizens other than individual intellectuals. For example, when
Japanese prime minister Junichiro Koizumi went to pay his respects at the
Yasukuni Shrine, opposition came from the top leaders down to regular
netizens in China. At the Strong Nation Forum, many mainland netizens
think that the tribute was to Class A war criminals like Hideki Tojo out of
religious reasons. But many moderate anti-Japan Hong Kong netizens
believed that this type of tribute was just "normal activity" for the
Japanese and they did not impute any political significance: "I am not
defending Japan. In truth, it was is easy to understand why people
would pay respect to the souls of war heroes. Whether or not they are
Class A war criminals is not the issue. The only issue is the social
status of Junichiro Koizumi. If he were an ordinary citizen, everybody
can accept his act. Right or not? If so, then why are we still
arguing over this endlessly?"

Japan is Hong Kong's third largest trading partner after
China and the United States. Conversely, Hong Kong is Japan's ninth
largest trading partner. Being anti-Japan is trendy in mainland China
and some mainlanders repel Japanese culture (interestingly, they become more
amenable to South Korean idols). Hong Kong and Japan have intensive
financial and trade ties. Since the 1970's, Japanese culture has
formed organic ties with the home-grown Hong Kong culture. Japanese
films, idols, music, television shows and games are part of the local Hong
Kong identity. Even during the the Defend Diaoyutai Movement in Hong
Kong in the 1970's, the Hong Kong people were not really opposing Japan;
instead, they were seeking affirmation of their own Hong Kong identity.

Interestingly enough, this is also a time when Japan trend
is booming in Hong Kong. The co-existence of anti-Japan politics and
pro-Japan culture makes Hong Kong people cognizant of the de-linking of
politics from economic and cultural issues. So when mainland netizens
call to boycott Japanese goods, that is incomprehensible here in Hong Kong.
Hong Kong people find it incredible that mainland anti-Japan sentiments can
reach out against movie stars like Zhao Wei and Zhang Ziyi.

[024] You Can Buy My
Peking University Diploma For One Yuan (10/19/2010) (Beijing
Times)

On October 11, there was a trade offer entitled <In order
to protest my problems in finding a good job, I am willing to sell my Peking
University diploma for one yuan> at the Ganji website to trading used goods.

According to the seller, he entered Peking University as
the top student from his province in 1999. He graduated in 2003.
His work career has been sputtering along since. For example, a so-so
company made him an offer of 1,500 RMB per month, even less than that for a
migrant laborer. On the first week at work, he had to clean the
offices and restrooms because that was supposed to prepare his attitude.

The seller said: "After all, I graduated from the top
university in China. Nowadays Peking University graduates don't mean
much!" He said that in order to protest against society, he made the
decision to "sell his Peking University diploma for one yuan."

Very quickly this post became popular at various websites
such as MOP, 55BBS, Netease, Sina.com and so on. Many netizens were
perplexed at why a elite university graduate could not find a decent job.
One netizen said that when a Peking University graduate could not get a job,
it only shows that he is not very good and it does not reflect on his
school. Another netizen said that it is not unusual because a Peking
University diploma does not guarantee a job as a high-paying manager.
Still other netizens are skeptical about the authenticity of the offer.

Our reporter tried to contact the seller and got no reply.
Our reporter contacted director Chen at the Peking University Career
Counseling Center. He said that he has read the post. At first
he suspected that the post was fabricated. But based upon the
information in the post, he investigated and determined that the documents
were genuine. "But the content is false. The graduation diplomas
belonged to an Advertising Major in the class of 2003. This graduate
is living a comfortable life; his pay is good, he has a house and a car.
He had no problems with his job. The setbacks in the story were
fabricated."

Director Chen said: "The principal was unaware of what
happened. When I called him and told him, he was shocked and angry.
He did not think that someone would exploit him this way. According to
him, he lost his diploma when he moved. Someone got it and made up
this story."

According to a fellow student, the principal has smooth
sailing in his career. Because he was such an excellent student in
school, he was hired by the Ogilvy and Mather advertising company after
graduation. He then went to become client service manager at the J.W.
Thompson advertising company. He also managed brands at Baidu.
He recently joined the Ganji Group where his annual salary is several
hundred thousand yuan per annum.

According to an informed source, the post was made by a
Ganji Group publicist who wanted to get some publicity for the company.
Yesterday morning, the Ganji team including the principal went to Peking
University to offer their apologies.

Our reporter tried to contact the individual, but there
was no contact. Our reporter contacted the Ganji Group. A worker
said that this was not a promotional gimmick and they are trying to figure
out how this came about. When asked why the diploma belonged to one of
their employees, this workers said that they don't know. "We are very
angry too. This morning, the bosses called a meeting for everyone to
discuss. It is a blow to Ganji to have this false information
involving a company employee's diploma. We are not running any
promotion gimmick. What company would use its own employee to hype
something up?"

This worker added that people need to provide copies of
their diplomas when looking for a job. "My colleague is trying to
remember whom he had sent copies of his diploma to. We cannot exclude
the possibility that this was an act of some competitor of ours."

When the reporter asked whether Ganji can determine from
their system who posted the information, the worker said that he was not
sure but the whole thing is being investigated.

Ever since the public restrooms became free of charge in
Wuhan city, the traffic in the Sanzhen town public restroom increased by 1.5
times. However, there was also an increased tendency for male users to
"spray" erroneously across wide areas during urination. This obviously
affected the conditions. 70% of the restroom janitors are female, who
could not be "observing" and "correcting" this sort of male behavior.

What is to be done?

According to the public restroom manager Han Shoubin, the
solution was to put a fake fly right over the urinal. This fake fly is
the same size as a real fly, and is stuck on the war with adhesive.
When the men urinate, they stare right at a fly and therefore they tend to
stand still. This measure has resulted in much less accidental "sparying"
in the public restrooms today.

An expert in this field commented: "The Qiaokou district
urban administrators have turned a psychological research result from the
social sciences into a productive use. This is seemingly trivial, but
it indicates progress in urban management theory and innovation in
harmonious governance. This is the first instance in China."

On October 13, a microblog post was making the rounds as
the most sensationalistic post of the day: "According to information, all
the people and houses in a certain village over at Qinling have disappeared.
Someone said that there were several flying objects with flashing lights
circling over the village. After a while, the objects left along with
the people and houses. The army is investigating there. All
information is sealed off."

Our reporter rushed over to Hanyang to investigate.
The truth was that the unidentified flying objects were the searchlights
from the Yintai Plaza in Hanyang city.

The reporter also checked the local Internet forums and
found out that the rumor began innocently enough. At 15:37 on October
11, the netizen "Zhang Lixing" wrote simply :"The strange incident at
Qinling." This simple sentence became the basis of everything that
happened afterwards. At 17:18 on October 12, the netizen "NDSWJ" wrote
a microblog post: "A blog post entitled 'the strange incident at Qinling'
has continued to be forwarded this morning!" At 01:30 on October 13,
the netizen "Spectral treaty signing" wrote at the Baidu form: "According to
information, an entire village has vanished. The army has interceded.
According to information, someone saw several unidentified flying objects
flying by at the time."

By October 13 morning, this type of information was going
around like crazy at the forums, Douban, the microblogs, etc. The
explanations came up by netizens included: wild man, UFO nuclear radiation,
snakes, hornets, giant salamanders, extraterrestrial beings, etc.
Often, a netizen would receive the information, embellish it with more
details and forward it to others. This caused the story to become more
detailed and complex as time went on.

[021] Liu Xiaobo:
Nobody Died On Tiananmen Square On June 4, 1989 (10/18/2010)
This may explain why certain overseas democracy activists don't like Liu
Xiaobo. He said that nobody died on Tiananmen Square and call those
overseas democracy activists (such as Wuer Kaixi, Chai Ling, Li Lu) who
insisted that the blood flowed like rivers on the Square liars.

In September 1989, the Chinese government arranged an
interview in which I told about what I personally witnessed and went through
on Tiananmen Square on the early morning of June 4, 1989. At the time,
I was still mentally in a stage where I wanted to hold on and refuse to
plead guilty. Therefore, the decision to do that interview was made
only after considerable mental anguish. I knew clearly that nobody
died when Tiananmen Square was cleared. But the purpose of this
interview would not be clarify the facts, which will only be exploited as
the tools and methods of the government's political goals. If I did
that interview, I would be a willing government tool and thus suffer bad
social impact. At the time, the whole world believed that the
martial-law troops had carried out a massacre right on Tiananmen Square.
Some June 4th participants who became overseas exiles were trying to
establish heroic images for themselves and therefore they distorted the
facts, they lied and they exaggerated the blood flowing like rivers on
Tiananmen Square (Wuer Kaixi, Chai Ling, Li Lu and others were all like
that). So if I showed up on television and said that I did not see
anyone die, I would be angering the whole world and that would be dreadful
for my public image. Since I was determined not to yield, I turned
down the interview request flat out. Firstly, this refusal will be a
sign that I won't cooperate with the government. Secondly, this will
increase the glory of my martyrdom. But, to keep silent on the facts
of history is like lying.

Based upon considering the political consequences as well
as my personal image, I turned down the offers by the interrogators twice.
But they showed me the <People's Daily> interview with Hou Dejian about how
Tiananmen Square was cleared. They said: "The facts will always be the
facts. If you didn't see anyone getting killed, if you didn't see
blood flowing like rivers, then why don't you dare to clarify the facts and
tell the truth? Do you have so many considerations before telling the
truth? That is not in the character of Liu Xiaobo. Besides, we
have been praising the four of you for organizing the peaceful evacuation.
Telling the truth won't harm anyone."

The interrogators convinced me. I found reasons to
do the interview.

1. It was a fact that I witnessed no deaths during the
evacuation of the square. It is my responsibility to history as well
as myself to tell the facts. I detest most of all for the Chinese
people distorting the facts in order to set up a good reputation. In
facing a choice between getting a moral reputation and respecting the facts,
Wuer Kaixi chose a moral reputation and gave up on the facts. In a
certain sense, especially so in this movement, it required courage to choose
to respect the facts. Therefore, even though this interview could
damage my moral reputation, I would rather do it than distort the facts.
I believe that I will be cleared in history some day.

2. Hou Dejian has already told the facts about the
clearing of the square. He was subjected to tremendous public opinion
pressure. The blindness and passion of the people were drowning out
the sincere voice of Hou Dejian. If telling the facts ends up bearing
the condemnation of the whole world, then I as an eyewitness must not let
Hou Dejian bear that burden alone. If I maintain my silence, I will
only strengthen the blind trust in the lies and the condemnations of Hou
Dejian by the world. Me and Hou Dejian were both eyewitnesses to the
clearing of the square. If Hou Dejian said nobody died whereas I
maintained silence, this proves that Hou Dejian was perjuring himself on
behalf of the government in order to save himself. I would be pushing
Hou Dejian to the front stage to take up all the responsibilities and
condemnations. If I testified, I can enhance the credibility of the
facts. I and Hou Dejian can share the unfair condemnations and dispel
the bad social influence -- the public anger that was inflamed by lies.

3. The government showed that nobody died on Tiananmen
Square during the evacuation. But this did not mean that nobody died
in Beijing. It is ironclad that gun were fired and people died.
That will not be changed because nobody died on Tiananmen Square.
Besides, the students (and not the government) ought to be praised when a
massacre was avoided on Tiananmen Square because the students withdrew
peacefully. Therefore, telling the facts is not relieving the
government of their responsibility. If the students did not withdraw
peacefully and fought back like the people in Liubukou, Muchi and elsewhere,
there would definitely deaths on Tiananmen Square with the possibility of a
massacre.

Based upon these reasons, I agreed to be interviewed by
official television for more than 40 minutes. I described the
evacuation on the square factually. But on the way back to Qincheng
prison after the interview, I was not calm. Instead, I was grim
because of the damage this interview might do to me. But without the
frankness of Hou Dejian and his willingness to tell the facts regardless of
the consequences and political impact, I might have chosen to remain silent,
or even lie, in order to maintain my public image and reputation. This
reminded me of Hans Christian Andersen's <The Emperor's New Clothes>.
Those experienced adults lied with their eyes open but only the naive child
can state the facts pointedly. Hou Dejian is that little child, but he
could not be tolerated in a world of lies. This was not just the
sorrow of the Chinese people, but the various media from other countries
deepened the sorrow. Certain irresponsible overseas exiles misled the
world media for personal reasons and the media misled the public. Once
the lies enter the hearts and minds, they become ironclad facts.

Therefore up to now, I am very unperturbed and satisfied
by my decision to explain what happened on the square on official
television. In making that decision, I pushed aside all considerations
of my public image and I acted responsibly towards history, friends and
myself. What caused me uneasiness was the fact that I had refused to
be interviewed twice because of I was only calculating my personal utility.
In like manner, when I wrote <The Repentance Document> after I got out of
jail, I regret it very much afterwards. At that time, I was just
fighting back against the pessimism over my bleak future and not out of a
persistence to give everything for my belief and conscience. Otherwise
I would not have written <The Repentance Document> at a time when the
bloodshed was gradually fading away in memory.

[020] Do You Care What
Arnulf Kolstad Really Said? (10/17/2010) ... if yes, then
you are a better person than I am. In any case, here is the history:

It is a big mistake to grant this year's Nobel
Peace Prize to Liu Xiaobo as the Chinese receiver made no contribution to
peace or conflict reduction, a Norwegian professor said Tuesday.

"Liu Xiaobo has, as far as I know, never
contributed in any conflict-reducing activity or take part in peace-related
activities," Professor Arnulf Kolstad of Norwegian University of Science and
Technology told Xinhua. "I therefore cannot see that the peace prize winner
fulfills the most important criteria in Nobel's testament. Therefore it is a
mistake," added the professor of social psychology and China expert.

...

The Nobel Committee "wants to promote Western
values all over the world even if the way it is done is not very relevant
and even contradictory to the purpose," said Kolstad. The professor
explicitly rejected the Norwegian body's argument that Liu's struggle for
human rights, especially the freedom of speech, and a Western parliamentary
democratic system in China is a prerequisite to world peace.

Many countries that have long followed the
Western political system, such as the United States, Britain and Norway,
have been among the most aggressive military powers in the last 50 years,
occupying and starting wars in others countries like Iraq and Afghanistan,
he noted.

Ironically, Kolstad said, many in the West still believe
that their system is the best in the world and has to be exported to all
other countries, "in some countries by force and wars, and in other
countries by supporting those who are believed to represent these values and
ideas." "To state that parliamentary democracy and freedom of speech
is a guarantee for peace and end of armed aggression is a mistake," he said.

Commenting on the Nobel Committee's claim that it is
independent of political influence, the professor said: "There is definitely
relationship to the official political system in Norway." He noted that the
committee leader is also a former Norwegian prime minister and president of
the parliament.

China has made remarkable progress in human rights, such
as plugging starvation, curbing crimes and promoting food safety, which are
"important not only for a developing and still poor country like China, but
for developed countries as well," Kolstad said. "In this way, the Western
world can learn human rights from China," he added.

Meanwhile, China carries a "relational" culture where
people seek relationships and harmony and are less inclined to stay out as
independent and autonomous human beings than those in Western societies,
Kolstad said. It is also simply unfair to label China as an undemocratic
country, he stressed, explaining that China adopts "another kind of
relationship between those in power and the people."

"The parliamentary system with more parties is not the
only way to give people influence on political decisions and the future of
their country. We have to accept that other countries choose other political
and democratic solutions, based on their culture and level of development,"
he said. "I do not know if it is more democratic to have a system where
presidential candidates have to be extremely rich to run for presidency," he
added.

Lurking underneath the West's uneasiness and faultfinding
with China, Kolstad pointed out, is that many in the West do not like to see
a big and in many way successful country like China having another political
system, based on other cultural values than is accepted in the West.

"I look at China as a peaceful, not aggressive country
compared with most developed countries in the world. China does not take
part in wars, it tries to solve international problems with dialogue," he
said. "I therefore think it is unfair to give a Peace Prize to the
opposition and dissidents in China instead of giving it to the president, as
in the U.S."

[The original article had been purged from the Boxun
website, but it can still be found in the Google cache by searching for "Boxun"+"Kolstad."
The screen capture is provided above. The translation is provided
below.]

Norwegian Professor
Arnulf Kolstad condemns Hu Jintao for rumor mongering after Liu Xiaobo got
the Nobel Prize/New York news commentator
(Boxun dateline Beijing time 2010.10.15 -- support this report's
author/reporter)
Boxun editor note: A reader claims that the professor is denying that there
was any fabrication -- that remains to be verified

On October 14, the Chinese Communist Xinhua agency
published <Even Norwegians can't stand it, criticism of Nobel Prize
Committee> in which it was alleged: "Norwegian University of Science and
Technology Arnulf Kolstad was interviewed by the Xinhua reporter on October
12. He severely criticized the Nobel Committee for awarding the Peace
Prize to Liu Xiaobo, saying that it was a 'huge mistake.' 'The Nobel
Committee had ulterior motives' because they wanted to promote western
values and political systems inside China" etc.

After Professor Arnulf Kolstad learned about this, he
immediately issued a statement in the capital of Norway: "This is sheer
fabrication. This is Goebbels tactics re-appearing. Hu Jintao is
trying to use a Norwegian to discredit the Nobel Prize. His
contemptible goal will never be accomplished. I completely agree with
the Nobel Committee awarding the Peace Prize this year to Chinese dissident
Professor Liu Xiaobo. I wish the people of China will rid themselves
of the Communist Party dictatorship and get their liberation and freedom
soon."

Professor Arnulf Kostad scorned Hu Jintao for being so
crude in his rumor mongering techniques. He said: "Look at the sayings
that Hu Jintao attributed to me. They are only sayings that someone
who has lived in China since childhood and who has been trained by the
Communist Party can say. Nobody in Norway talks like that. This
is too ridiculous and risible. If Hu Jintao is willing, I can be his
professor and tell him how Norwegians compose their sentences."

According to Boxun's New York-based news commentator, when
Professor Kolstad heard about the Xinhua report and immediately issued a
statement from the capital of Norway: "This is sheer fabrication. This
is Goebbels tactics re-appearing." He said that it was disgusting that
someone should be using a Norwegian to discredit the Nobel Peace Prize.
Professor Kolstad said that he completely agrees with the Nobel Committee
awarding the Peace Prize this year to Chinese democracy activist Liu Xiaobo.
He wishes the people of China get their freedom soon.

(Voice
of America) Did the Norwegian Reporter criticize the awarding of
the Nobel Prize to Liu Xiaobo? October 17, 2010.

Recently Xinhua published a report entitled <Big mistake
to award Nobel Peace Prize to noncontributor to peace: Norwegian professor>.
It claimed that when interviewed by the Xinhua reporter on October 12,
Norwegian University of Science and Technology professor Arnulf Kolstad said
that it was a huge mistake for the Nobel Committee to award the Peace Prize
to Liu Xiaobo this year. "The Nobel Committee has ulterior motives"
because they wanted to promote western values and political systems inside
China." The English-language Xinhua website also published this
report.

But a small number of overseas websites claimed on October
15 and 6 that "When Professor Kolstad learned about the Xinhua report, he
immediately issued a statement from the capital of Oslo: 'This is sheer
fabrication. This is Goebbels tactics re-appearing." He said
that it was disgusting that someone should be using a Norwegian to discredit
the Nobel Peace Prize. Professor Kolstad said that he completely
agrees with the Nobel Committee awarding the Peace Prize this year to
Chinese democracy activist Liu Xiaobo. He wishes the people of China
get their freedom soon.'

Did Norwegian University of Science and Technology
psychology professor Arnulf Kolstad came out to deny the Xinhua report?
Our reporter followed up and was neither able to locate the source of the
report nor verify it. Our reporter has sent an email to Professor
Kolstad to ask for an interview. But as of the deadline, there was no
reply yet from Professor Kolstad.

In order to clarify matters, Deutsche Welle interviewed
Kolstad by telephone on October 17. Kolstad said that he was
interviewed by a Chinese reporter. He has also read the
English-language Xinhua report and he did not think that there was anything
unusual about the quotations of his views. Also, he did not issue any
statement condemning Xinhua for rumor mongering. He knew nothing about
that. Kolstad emphasized that he has expressed his dissatisfaction
with the Nobel Peace Prize many times in interviews with Norwegian and
foreign media. The Deutsche Welle reporter noticed that on the day
when the Nobel Peace Prize was announced (October 8), a Norwegian media
outlet published an interview with Kostad, in which he said more or less the
same thing as in that Xinhua interview.

[ESWN comment:

What lessons can be derived from this fiasco?

First of all, the whole thing started with an anonymous
unsourced report at the overseas Chinese website Boxun. Whenever you
see a sensationalistic exclusive story from Boxun, red lights should be
flashing and sirens should be screaming. Boxun does not have a good
track record. Once upon a time, they broke the SARS story in 2003.
They have been living off that reputation since. Here are a couple of
examples picked up from this website: The First Avian Flu Case In Beijing
and The Case of Li Changqing.
In this specific case, it was weird that the report had Kolstad invoking Hu
Jintao -- that should have been a telltale sign. Given his position
and responsiblities, Hu Jintao will not micro-manage a propaganda campaign
directed against one dissident. If Hu was involved in this kind of
thing all the time, China would have fallen apart a long time ago.

Secondly, please notice the media outlets who are
busily chasing this non-existent story: Radio France International, Voice of
America and Deutsche Welle. Nobody else cares, not the western
commercial media and not the Chinese blogs/forums. It is good to know
that state-funded media are irrelevant to real people everywhere (inside and
outside China).]

Recently in Xushui county, Hebei province, the urban
management department asked all of the several hundred stores to change to
uniform store front advertisment banners. Some shops were reluctant
because it would cost several thousand yuan. "Many of the stores have
just gotten new banners. There should not be a uniform requirement to
change." Many shop operators also wondered why a law enforcement
agency ought to participate in the design and financing of advertisements.

At 1am on October 12, 2010, Xushui urban management
department workers marched through town with long poles with which they used
to vandalize all store front banners. So now the stores are going to
have to replace the banners!

[017] The Chinese Tea
House At The Louvre Museum (10/14/2010) (iNewsweek)

On October 13, the Forbidden Palace Museum director Zheng
Xinmiao spoke at a cultural forum osted by People's Daily. During the
interview, Zheng answered many questions from the reporters.

To the question, "The Forbidden Palace is a landmark of
Chinese culture. Several years ago, the presence of Starbucks inside
the Forbidden Palace was highly controversial. What is your view?"
For the first time, director Zheng provided a public statement.

Zheng Xinmiao said: "With respect to the Starbucks issue,
I personally view that people link their knowledge and image of the
Forbidden with our culture, dignity and history. At the time, people
demanded Starbucks be ousted. A People's Congress delegate from
Heilongjiang province made a recommendation to do that. But the Palace
Museum did not make a direct response. Personally, the most
significant reason was that before I took up this job, Starbucks was already
year. Also I don't think that we can go around saying that we are
proud that the Louvre Museum in Paris has a Chinese teahouse on one hand but
we need to get Starbucks out of the Forbidden Palace on the other hand.
Starbucks is a place to serve the public's needs. Starbucks is also a
well-established brand."

He recalled: "After people started talking about the
issue, the former director called me. He said, 'You must note that
this is narrow nationalism.' At the time, he was very clear in his
message. The Forbidden Palace did not response formally. A short
while later, the Starbucks manager in charge of the Beijing area wrote me a
letter to say that they wanted to pull out. He said, 'We seemed to
have become the sinner who destroyed a Chinese cultural heritage.' He
said, 'I am a very simple businessman, but we want to pull out. We
want to find a suitable moment that people can find acceptable to pull
out'."

Zheng Xinmiao said, "Last year ... or it may be the year
before last ... I don't recall exactly ... a newspaper called us in June and
asked, 'You said that the result will come out in July. Where is it?'
At the time, we were re-organizing the Forbidden Palace. We were
re-arranging the various business outlets. We spoke to Starbucks and
they said that they don't want to conduct business there anymore."

Zheng Xinmiao said, "As we look at this in retrospect,
this is about the attitude of a grand nation and the tolerance of the
Chinese civilization. I think everybody has thought about this matter.
I think that even if I don't speak out, everybody will already have more
complete, more rational and calmer views. Our nation is developing and
our people are experiencing a rebirth. But I feel that we need to be
more tactful on dealing with certain matters. I had asked the cadre at
our French embassy to check out the business operations at the Louvre Museum
in Paris. They have all sorts of businesses there, including a Chinese
teahouse. This is about the self-confidence of our people. The
Chinese people have such a long tradition. So can a small coffeehouse
knock us out? I don't think so. Although the matter is history
already, we may look back and think about it in a more rational manner."

As seen on the surveillance videotape, a motorcycle came
to the intersection at a high speed. Suddenly a small truck showed up
at the intersection to make a turn. There was a heavy collision
between the two vehicles. The back gate of the truck popped open,
while the front of the motorcycle was almost completely demolished.

But something astonishing can also be seen. When the
collision occurred, the motorcyclist was bounced into the air and his
momentum propelled him forward high in the air. But the motorcyclist
made a full 360 degree somersault and landed on his feet safely. Then
the motorcyclist touched his shirt, as if he was upset that the somersault
had ruffled his clothes. Then he slowly and calmly sauntered up to the
wreck that was his motorcycle and shook his head in sadness.

According to the Wenzhou police, the motorcyclist left the
scene of the accident before the police arrived. The motorcycle is
unregistered. If the owner does not show up, the motorcycle will be
confiscated.

This video was posted at the various Wenzhou Internet
forums. Netizens applauded the amazing feat of the motorcyclist, whom
they have dubbed "Brother Gymnast." They said that the difficulty of
this somersault was 9.9, comparable to Olympic gymnasts.

[015] The Talk Of The
Town (10/12/2010) This op-ed essay has Hong Kong and the rest of
the world buzzing ...

In non-peace related fields, there are Nobel Prizes and,
somewhat less famously, "Ig Nobel Prizes". A group of scientists presents
the latter annually, as a joke, but also to make a point about undeserving
activity in their fields. One of the winners of this year's Nobel prize for
physics had, several years back, also received an Ig Nobel prize.

The award of this year's Nobel Peace Prize to imprisoned
dissident Liu Xiaobo is being celebrated globally, mainly by elites who
claim to know what Liu is about. They say he is for human rights and
democracy, but there is more to it than that, because much of what he is
about is ignoble.

When people living in authoritarian societies demand
freedom of speech, they usually do so with goals in mind that go beyond just
allowing everyone to have a say. Liu's political and social goals have
scarcely been mentioned in the current wave of adulation, yet these goals
are distinctly at variance with the interests of the vast majority of
Chinese, as they perceive them.

What a few people in China know about Liu, but hardly any
outsiders do, is his prescription for China's development, first made when
Liu was already in his 30s. In 1988, an interviewer asked him what condition
China needed to have real historical change.

He answered that China needed to have 300 years of
colonisation. Liu attributed what Hong Kong is today to 100 years of
colonisation, so China would need 300 years of colonisation for it to become
like Hong Kong.

That was more than two decades ago but, in 2007, Liu
stated that he did not want to take back what he had said in 1988, because
it reflected a belief he retained. He attributed progress in China to
Westernisation and said the more that Westernisation existed in the various
spheres of Chinese society, the more progress was attained.

He is either woefully ignorant of the nature of
colonialism, which involved legally mandated racial discrimination and the
colonisers' political and economic monopolies, or Liu finds it a congenial
alternative because he is convinced of Western superiority. This can hardly
be expected to be a sentiment shared by most Chinese.

In his 2007 statement, Liu claimed that, in the economic
sphere, progress could be chalked up to privatisation. Not surprisingly
then, Charter 08, a statement he mainly authored and that called for a
Western-style political system in China, also urges a "free market" transfer
of state-owned enterprises to private ownership and the privatisation of
land ownership.

Privatisation in Russia resulted in a colossal robbery of
public wealth by a few oligarchs. To the extent privatisation has occurred
in China, it has mainly enriched former officials and has often worsened the
conditions of labour. An agrarian capitalism based on landed property would
have no assured benefit, but might bring back the execrable system of
landlords and landless peasants. Further privatisation would probably
increase the already high level of inequality in China, which is why surveys
show that most Chinese oppose it.

Many observers recognise that the Nobel Peace Prize is a
political prize, and a morally bankrupt one at that: do something that
accords with mainstream Western elite thinking about what "advances peace",
and you may get a prize. Continue, for as long as you can, a war that kills
thousands or even millions of civilians, as Henry Kissinger did in Indochina
and Barack Obama is doing in Afghanistan, and you may still get a prize. If
you attack China, the perceived potential rival of the West's hegemon, as
the Dalai Lama and Liu have done, your chances for a prize increase.

The Chinese government has argued that the spirit of the
Nobel Peace Prize has been infringed by awarding it to one who is imprisoned
for violating Chinese law. That, however, is beside the point. There was no
need to imprison Liu and there has been no need for a binary choice between
shutting him up by fiat or treating him as a hero. Rather, there has only
been a need to bring to light Liu's self-proclaimed goals. If most Chinese,
especially the non-elite majority, knew about his prescribed path for China,
they would turn away from him as someone with things ignoble on offer.

The world has many political prisoners; most are in fact
imprisoned in countries with governments that continue to receive all manner
of assistance from other countries that proclaim themselves beacons of human
rights and democracy. Among those myriads languishing in prison, most want
something far better for the peoples of their country than does Liu and are
far worthier of an award because of it.

[Barry Sautman is a political scientist and lawyer at Hong
Kong University of Science & Technology. Yan Hairong is an anthropologist at
Hong Kong Polytechnic University ]

There is another blog post being circulated around the
Chinese-language Internet (mostly on overseas websites). The post is
Nobel
Politics by Steven Lendman and is critical of Liu Xiaobo. More
interestingly, the Chinese-language report on this post identifies the
author Steven Lendman as a CNN vice-president.

[translation: The American online website CNN
vice-president Stephen Lendman recently wrote an article critical of the
Nobel Committee's award of the Nobel Peace Prize to Chinese dissident Liu
Xiaobo. He said that the Nobel Peace Prize Committee is a notorious
western tool and the Nobel Peace Prize and other awards were not intended to
promote values that are shared across the world.]

A CNN logo is even included:

This Steven Lendman's biography as posted on his blog is:
"I was born in 1934 in Boston, MA, raised in a modest middle income family,
attended public schools, received a Harvard BA in 1956 and a Wharton MBA in
1960. After six years as a marketing research analyst, became part of a new
small family business in 1967, remaining there until retiring in 1999. Have
since devoted my time to progressive causes, extensive reading, and since
summer 2005 writing on vital world and national topics, including war and
peace, American imperialism, corporate dominance, political persecutions,
and a range of other social, economic and political issues. In early 2007,
began regular radio hosting, now The Progressive Radio News Hour on The
Progressive Radio Network. Full information above."

A woman celebrating the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize
to a Chinese dissident has been charged with assault for accidentally
splashing champagne on a security guard outside the Chinese central
government's liaison office in Hong Kong.

"The officer walked up as I was opening a bottle of
champagne and he was splashed," said Ip Ho-yee, 22. "It was a minor
incident. I never guessed that opening a bottle of champagne would lead to
this."

The security guard was not injured, but he made a
complaint, so Ip was arrested and charged with common assault, said Hong
Kong police spokesman Lawrence Li.

Here is the moment captured on video:

Here is Kobe Bryant being assaulted with champagne after
winning the 2010 NBA Championship. Someone call the police!

[013] I Am A Rock
(10/12/2010) (Wenxue
City) Gulang County (Gansu province) is classified as an
"impoverished" county. Recently, the local leaders took highly visible
action to bring prosperity to the county. They spend a huge sum of money
to move a 400-ton rock from one Gulang Gorge to the Golden Triangle (at the
edge of the county city). According to one source, the county spent more
than 5 million yuan. Another source said that the actual amount was 13
million yuan but they are understating it as 3 million yuan.

What is so important about moving this rock? What has
this to do with the prosperity of the people? In Chinese, there is a
saying: 时来运转 ("when the moment comes, your luck will
change"). In Chinese, the word 时 ("moment") sounds
the same as 石 ("rock"). So moving the rock means
石来运转 ("when the rock comes, your luck will change").
Of course, it is not as simple as just moving a rock. The county
consulted many fengshui masters to pick the right moment and the right
location. For example, the location was chosen to be the exit point of
the county because the people have been leaving the place to make their
fortunes elsewhere but now the rock obstacle will make sure that they stay and
contribute to the economy. There were also incense burning,
firecrackers, etc all along the nine-kilometer journey of the rock.

It was also claimed that the county mayor made a kowtow
every third step while walking 99 meters to greet the rock.

[012] Wen Jiabao,
China's Great Hero (10/12/2010) "China hands" read editorials in
the major official Chinese media (People's Daily, Liberation Daily, Guangming
Daily, CCTV, etc) as weather vanes to the latest political direction.
The talk at the moment is this fawning article in Guangming Daily
on Premier Wen Jiabao. Only two weeks ago, the same (generally
conservative/reactionary) newspaper published an editorial from a
diametrically opposite direction. Has the winds shifted direction?
Keep reading the future editorials in this newspaper ...

Wen Jiabao, China's Great Hero By Zhong
Xiaojun.

Premier Wen Jiabao is a great hero for the Chinese people.
He is a true man of today. For more than a month during this grim
autumn, Wen Jiabao has shown unmatched courage to bring up the issue of
political reform. On September 23, he was interviewed on CNN and he
brought out these "earth-shaking" statements: "The desire and need of the
people for democracy and freedom are unstoppable" and "No party,
organization or persons have the privilege to bypass the constitution and
the law. We must all act in accordance with the constitution. I
believe that this is an important characteristic in contemporary political
systems. Let me summarize my political ideas in four sentences: let
the people live happily with dignity; let the people feel safe and assured;
let society be filled with justice; let people be confident about the
future." "Although there are various kinds of ideas in society and
although there exists various kinds of obstacles, I will firmly and
immovably carry out my ideas to the best of my ability. I will
increase the pace of political reform. I want to use two phrases to
express my determination: 'Wind and rain will be no obstacle, no rest until
I die'." "The people and the power of the people will determine the
future and the history of the nation. The hope and will of the people
will not stop. Those who abide by it will flourish, those who oppose
it will perish!"

The "cry" of Wen Jiabao represent the conscience of the
government and the hope of the people. It reflects the unyielding will
of the people and the call of social progress. It has gained a firm
echo within every Chinese person.

[...]

A small number of people do not understand high-level
politics. They accuse the virtually isolated Premier of being "all
show and no action." They don't understand that Wen Jiabao is just one
person out of nine (note: in the Politburo). One vote out of nine
votes is insignificant. His decisions are only made in the economic
realm. He cannot eliminate the system of labor reform or release some
prisoner or the other. Besides, when politicians talk, they are
already doing things. A call to social mobilization is more powerful
and valuable than doing one or two specific things.

Some people accuse Wen Jiabao of just trying to salvage
the existing system. In his speeches, he often used concepts such as
"socialism" without mentioning universal values such as "independence of the
judiciary" and "freedom of press." This kind of view is very naive.
Wen Jiabao lives inside the system. If he wants to push for social
progress and he completely rejects the language of the system (actually,
real socialism isn't so bad), he would have lost his job a long time ago.
How would he get the chance to serve the people? Today, the populists
and the leftist extremists are attacking him for being a capitalist roader.
He is being attacked from both sides. Therefore, Wen Jiabao's unique
sayings reflect his political wisdom.

Other people say that supporting Wen Jiabao is a case of
naivete, in which the slaves say that their owner is wise and benevolent.
Actually, in a civic society, government officials should be criticized as
well as praised. Of course, everything should be premised on equality.
China does not need wise and benevolent rulers, but we should be welcoming
politicians with modern ideas and the sense of civic responsibility.

Of course, we want to support Premier Wen Jiabao in
fulfilling his ambitious goals -- "to carry out the political reforms" and
"to let fairness and justice be even more brilliant than the sun."

Perhaps Wen Jiabao is the least powerful government
official in China and many people are happy to see him being so beleaguered.
But the majority of the Chinese people will support the people's hero --
Premier Wen!

The news reports and commentaries referred to the document
Charter 08. The document is a group project and not the work of Liu
Xiaobo alone. Some reports point out that Charter 08 had jumped from the
initial 300 or so signatories to 10,000 (or some such number), as if this is a
sign of success. I should like to point out to two articles that were
posted here way back then.

On January 20, 2009, Rebecca MacKinnon wrote:
What does Charter 08 mean? Too soon to tell... Well, this
is more than 20 months later now. Until the Nobel Peace Prize was
announced, Charter 08 was dead in the water. Will the Prize provide a
new impetus? Will freedom and democracy be on the march now? Well,
I suggest that unless Charter 08 (or any other message) can connect with many
people in other social strata, it will remain a mental exercise among "public
intellectuals."

The other piece of Liu Xiaobo writing that is constantly
being referred to (as in translated Sima Nan's essay below) is a December 1998
Open Magazine interview. It was published 22 years ago, but
people still use Liu's words against him. Here are the excerpts that are
being cited:

Q. You are traveling all over the world right now.
Do you intend to return to China?
A. I don't want to go back at the moment. But I cannot guarantee that
there won't be any changes in the future.

Q. A Chinese writer said that it is hard to come up with
results after leaving your county and your people. Do you agree?
A. They are setting up a backup plan. This is a sign of weakness.
Life takes place right underneath your feet. You are living every
minute. You only need to face your interior world and maintain your
feelings, and you will be able to write no matter where you are.

Q. Will you be facing a choice?
A. I have a limitation that I cannot overcome: the language problem. I
cannot use English to express my interior world as well as I can in Chinese.
I may have the ability to express myself in English some day, but I will
have no flavor in the language. Therefore, if I can get by with the
language, then I want nothing to do with China. My greatest sorrow is
that I am limited by language, in that I have to speak for China. I am
conversing with something very stupid and vulgar. This type of
conversation can make me worse and worse.

Q. They are bringing out the slogan "March towards the
world" for Chinese literature. But I find that they are resistant
against the outside world to a certain extent (especially certain young
writers). In Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, people like
Solzhenitsyn and Kundera didn't mind living abroad and they produced good
writing.
A. This resistance came about because they are too feeble. Chinese
Literature "marching towards the world" is a fake issue. Just like the
issue of not being able to win the Nobel Prize, the assumption was that
Chinese writers are good enough to win the Nobel Prize, but why aren't they
winning? If the Nobel Prize really represents the top in the world,
then this assumption is false. Of course, Nobel Prize writings are not
necessary the best.

...

Q. In recent years, Marxism is coming under attack.
Is it declining in China? Did it lose its value?
A. The only impact that Marx had on me was his uncompromising critical
position. His historical materialism also makes some sense, but some
of the other stuff is nonsense. For example, he analyzed western
society as: exploiters and exploited, capitalists and workers. This is
too simple because he couldn't see how the various classes held each other
in check. Strictly speaking, class analysis is no longer applicable in
the western world. Marx's dialectical methodology was applicable only
in a totalitarian society. Marx's Communism was just one phase of the
western tradition, from Plato's Utopia to Paradise in the Bible. From
Moore's Utopia to Campanella's City of the Sun to French Utopian socialism.
The nonsense part of Marxism is that it promises that it will all be
realized tomorrow: capitalism established all the materialistic conditions
for communism to emerge as soon as the revolution takes place. Marx's
ideal is too cheap.

Q. What developmental stage do you think Chinese society
is in?
A. It has not yet emerged out of an agrarian society.

Q. Is there any need to take remedial classes in
capitalism?
A. It is essential.

Q. So should China follow the usual path for an agrarian
society?
A. Yes. But it has to modify its totalitarian regime because it is
looking at a crisis.

Q. Can China make fundamental changes?
A. Impossible. Even if one or two rulers want to, there is still no
way because the conditions are not there.

Q. Under what circumstances can China carry out a genuine
historical transformation?
A. Three hundred years of colonialism. Hong Kong became like this
after one hundred years of colonialism. China is so much larger, so
obviously it will take three hundred years of colonialism. I am still
doubtful whether three hundred years of colonialism will be enough to turn
China into Hong Kong today.

Q. This is 100% "treason."
A. I will cite one sentence from Marx's Manifesto of the Communist Party:
"Workers do not have motherlands. You cannot take away what they don't
have." I care about neither patriotism nor treason. If you say
that I betray my country, I will go along! I admit that I am an
impious son who dug up his ancestors' graves and I am proud of it.

Q. You are saying that you want China to take Hong Kong's
path?
A. But history will not give this opportunity to the Chinese people.
The era of colonialism has gone by. Nobody is willing to bear the
burden known as China.

Q. What can be done? Isn't this too pessimistic?
A. There is no way out. I am pessimistic about humankind as a whole.
But my pessimism is not escapism. I see before me one tragedy after
another tragedy. But I will struggle and I will fight back. That
is the reason why I like Nietzche and I don't like Schopenhauer.

Some people declared this conversation to be a throwaway
line that was used ironically. Since the Chinese people are supposed
to have no sense of irony/humor, they just didn't get it. On December
19, 2006, Liu Xiaobo wrote a "clarification" for Open Magazine.

In November 1988, I had just finished a three-month visit
to Oslo University (Norway) and I was heading to University of Hawaii (USA).
I deliberately chose to go through Hong Kong. It felt great to visit
the free port created by colonialsim for the first time! It felt even
better to be interviewed by Mister Jin Zhong!

During the interview, Mr. Jin Zhong posed many straight
questions and I replied without holding anything back. I ended up
saying something infuriated many people.

Q. Under what circumstances can China carry out a genuine
historical transformation?
A. Three hundred years of colonialism. Hong Kong became like this
after one hundred years of colonialism. China is so much larger, so
obviously it will take three hundred years of colonialism. I am still
doubtful whether three hundred years of colonialism will be enough to turn
China into Hong Kong today.

After the June 4th incident, this impromptu statement
about "three hundred years of colonization" became the evidence used by the
Chinese Communists to persecute me. Even today, the angry young
patriots use it to criticize my "treasonous ideas." Yet, I will not
defend this statement on the grounds that it was a not well-thought-our
response during an interview. At a time when nationalism holds the
high point in China today, I really don't want to withdraw that statement.

[009] The Chinese
Traitor Who Got A Prize Is Still A Chinese Traitor (10/10/2010)
(by
Sima Nan)

The Chinese writer who advocated 300 years of colonialism
for China has won the Nobel Prize.

All manners of Chinese traitors, big and small, those with
traitorous leanings and just busybodies, are congratulating each other and
celebrating. Some are even weeping in joy, as if victory has been
achieved.

Here is the hidden version of Nobel Prize Committee's
award speech:

This prize is given to you for your vision and
perseverance. Born in Red China in 1956, you were destined to
bring trouble to the Chinese people. 20 years ago, you sent out the
strongest voice to the free world to say that "China needs to go through
300 years under colonialism." You did not hesitate to sell out the
interests of your country of birth. You continued to compile
information to attack the Communist regime, regardless of the great
progress that China has made. You were always ready to brave the
legal risks to always find new materials to humiliate them. You are a good
crusader and a practitioner of universal values. Today, China has acquired
the status as the world's second biggest economic power. You have
continued to work for the revaluation of the yuan, which is very important
to the interests of the United States of America regime.

1. This event could be foreseen a long time ago. A
while ago, Norway indicated that it was coming under pressure from China.
Chinese deputy foreign minister Fu Ying said that Sino-Norwegian
relationship will be severely harmed if the prize was given to the guy who
advocated 300 years of colonialism for China. Norway may be a small
country, but they are awesome. The Nobel Institute's director Geir
Lundestad said that the Nobel Prize Committee will not succumb to outside
pressure. For some years, Havel and others who are hostile to China
have been working to get this result. The pressure from the country
that noses into everybody else's business was even stronger on Norway this
time, but Norway won't say so.

2. Lech Walesa was the first person to initiate changes in
Eastern Europe and he was the first to win the Nobel Peace Prize.
Andrei Sakharov was the first dissident to try for a color revolution, and
he also won the Nobel Prize. Sergei Gorbachev caused the Soviet Union
to collapse from the inside, and he won the Nobel Prize. The Dalai
Lama did his best to split up China, and he won the Nobel Prize. Gao
Xingjian used language to demonize China in <One Person's Bible> and he won
the Nobel Prize. The wealthy businesswoman Rebiya Kadeer plotted on
Xinjiang independence and she was nominated for the Nobel Prize. The
bigoted Elder Auntie Gao is mentally unbalanced and exaggerates the AIDS
problem in China, with the number of deaths fluctuating depending her mood
at the time, and she was also nominated for the Nobel Prize. A retired
military hospital doctor was interviewed for western media reporters and
claimed that countless number of persons died from SARS, and he was
nominated for the Nobel Prize ... The picture behind the Nobel Prize should
be clear. If you are absolutely shameless and you can inflict the
maximum embarrassment on the targeted nation, you will get a chance to
contest for a Nobel prize.

3. One cannot say that the Nobel Prize is pointless.
Each year, this group of people spend so much time, effort and money to do
this, so there must be some point. Superficially, this is about
advancing peace among mankind. But this does not stop the Nobel
Committee from giving the prize to a warmonger. Just as soccer fans
sometimes fail to understand the actions of the referees, the people of the
world were astonished to watch the shameless sight of a Nobel Peace Prize
winner talking about the significance of his prize while "surging" troops
into Afghanistan and also selling USD 6.392 billions worth of armaments to
Taiwan. The shame ought to be shared equally by the prize winner and
the Nobel Committee.

4. Some people wondered what happens now that the Chinese
traitor has won the Nobel Prize. I can't see anything happening to China. Even though
China was overmatched in the Korean and Vietnam wars, Big Brother did not
achieve total victory. So we can forget about that today. But we
must also make sure that we don't degrade ourselves. When someone
wants to lecture us with "The Nobel Prize reflects universal values, and
therefore China must do this or that ..." we must maintain our composure and
answer sternly. We will not break down in tears, pour our hearts out
and discuss how we will pursue these so-called universal values. When
the other Nobel Prize winner American president Barack Obama calls for us to
release so-and-so, you must have the courage to correct him: "No.
China has an independent judiciary which will not be ordered about by you."
When someone slaps you in the face, insults your motherland and rips up the
dignity of your people, you cannot talk nice, be a good student and try to
create a good impression. You need to have some backbone. You
need to be confident about Chinese culture and the political system first,
before you hold a dialogue with outsiders.

5. Even today there are still people
who wondered when a Chinese person can win a Nobel Prize. What does it
say when the Chinese don't win Nobels? For some of us who have been
subjected to propagandistic bombardment for the last 30 years, the Nobel
Prize is positive, sacred and unattainable. This type of reverse
racial discrimination only enhances the legend around the Nobel Prize.
I don't know what happens with Nobel science prizes (which Fang Zhouzi and
Xiao Chuanguo can enlighten us on), but by observing what happens with the
Nobel Peace Prize and the Literature Prize, I can tell that they are
obviously being hostile to the Chinese people again and again. Twenty
years ago, we should have stopped this type of sick talk about the Nobel
Prize. Unfortunately, we didn't do that. As a result, many of us
have forgotten the principles behind the economic opening. Today when
people say that there are no banned zones in thoughts, they have violated
the principles. "The Four Basic Principles" have been discarded as
antique junk by them.

6. Our Foreign Ministry spokesperson Ma
Zhaoxu said on October that the Nobel Committee was going against the
principles of the Nobel Peace Prize in giving it to that person. This
was an insult to the Nobel Peace Prize. That comment was correct and
timely. But Ma Zhaoxu ought to have parsed the question that was posed
to him: "You say that the Nobel Committee has given the Peace Prize to the
'dissident' so-and-so. Firstly, this so-and-so is not a 'dissident.'
He is not dissenting anything. He is just working in cahoots with
those anti-China hostile forces inside and outside China. This is not
dissidence. In Chinese language, this person is a 'Chinese traitor'
and 'cultural comprador.' A Chinese traitor is a Chinese traitor
PERIOD There is no need to use a different term. Secondly, this
person opposes China not just in words but in actions. His specific
acts violated the legal principles within the Constitution of the People's
Republic of China. At this moment, this person is serving time in a
Chinese prison. China is building a nation based upon rule of law.
Our beloved Premier Wen Jiabao has said that "the law is greater than the
sky." Do you want your Nobel Prize to usurp the law?

7. This Nobel story had been told for
more than a century, and people believed it for as long -- Mr. Nobel who
discovered dynamite had a pang of conscience and donated his estate to set
up a Nobel Prize Foundation which has no politics, culture, national
boundaries and even values. But this was just the introduction to the
long novel <The Nobel Story>. Today, the Nobel Prize is supported
mainly by the capital funds from the Freemasons in America and Europe --
mainly the Rothschild family. For this reason, we can understand why
the Nobel Prize has deviated from the intentions of its founder, lost any
sense of fairness and justice and became the tool of its manipulators.
Simply put, the people who provide the funding dictate the rules of the
game.

8. I had said before that a Chinese
traitor who has won a prize is still a Chinese traitor. Something else
needs to be said at the same time: A Chinese traitor who didn't win a prize
is still a Chinese traitor. In fact, they are even more dangerous.
The one who won the prize is locked up in prison. But the Chinese
traitors who are still free are stirring up trouble. They frequently
show up in media reports as "public intellectuals" who spread "universal
values" etc. They say "We don't want modernization; we want
modernity." That can be quite fascinating. For example, Xu Youyu
is a "public intellectual" being promoted by <Southern Weekend>. He
worked his heart out for this Chinese traitor to get the Nobel Peace Prize
this time. He wrote letters to the Nobel Committee to suggest that
giving the prize to so-and-so will "bury totalitarian rule" and "bury
violence." It is clear what Xu Youyu meant by "totalitarian rule" but
his "violence" is definitely not referring to the violent people who are
causing bloodshed on a wide scale in Iraq, Afghanistan and the former
Yugoslavia. Chinese traitors are clear about who they love or hate.
They will lead the ghouls into the village, ransack all the houses one a
time ... the loud-voiced, bold-actioned and remorseless Chinese traitors get
points for their performances. From afar, they all have the word
"Slave" sewn on the back of their clothes.

At least 8 mainland newspaper (People's Daily, Guangming
Daily, Economic Daily at the national level; Beijing Daily, Beijing News,
Beijing Times in Beijing; Wen Wei Po in Shanghai) reported on the news of
Liu Xiaobo receiving the Nobel Peace Prize by posting the Xinhua Agency
statement. The report has just over 300 words. Most of the
headings were <Foreign Ministry spokesperson: Nobel Committee's giving the
Peace Prize to Liu Xiaobo is an insult to the Prize>. The
English-language Global Times published the editorial piece 2010
Nobel Peace Prize a disgrace.

Among the television stations, only CCTV reported the
affair.

Yesterday a fake <Beijing Youth Daily> page was circulated
on the mainland Internet. In the page, the news about Liu Xiaobo was
featured as a headline story. Netizens commented, "Does <Beijing Youth
Daily> want to die? In truth, <Beijing Youth Daily> did not publish
such a page. It is believed that someone forged that page.

Postscript: It seemed that Xinhua also had another news story where
the hatchet job on the Nobel Peace Prize was subcontracted to a Russian news
agency. Well, actually,
Anne Applebaum had a much better piece dated 2009.

[007] Hong Kong
Newspaper Front Pages (10/09/2010) Under the
"One Country, Two Systems" arrangement, Hong Kong has freedom of press quite
different from mainland China. On this day, Chinese citizen Liu Xiaobo
was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Here is how the front page covers of
the various Hong Kong newspapers with online versions.

[006] Mario Llosa
Vargas, Nobel Prize in Literature (10/07/2010) At one time in my
life, I was a Latin Americanist who read all the major writers there. In
my view, the greatest work by Mario Llosa Vargas is not Aunt Julia and the
Scriptwriter or any other novel, but A Fish In The Water -- his own
account as a presidential candidate in Peru in 1990. This was a
cautionary tale about the follies of 'democracy.'

As Mario Vargas Llosa was preparing to become the
conservative standard-bearer in Peru's 1990 presidential elections, Octavio
Paz was not the only literary colleague to warn him that novelists should
write novels, that intellectuals should not run for office. But whether out
of vanity, patriotism or innocence, he ran for president anyway, persuaded
by his aversion for the left and his faith in the market economy that he
could save Peru from the poverty, terrorism, corruption, runaway inflation
and racism that had made it virtually ungovernable.

By the time he emerged, bruised and defeated, from three
years of political combat, he seemed positively relieved that he had lost.
He had discovered that the reverse side of political idealism was
"maneuvers, intrigues, plots, paranoias, betrayals, a great deal of
calculation, no little cynicism and every variety of con game," he writes in
his memoir, "A Fish in the Water." He had come to know a country of
"hatreds, resentments and prejudices" that fell far short of his dreams for
it. And the proof was that it had rejected him.

Three days after conceding to Alberto K. Fujimori, now
President of Peru, Mr. Vargas Llosa flew to Paris and returned to a world of
letters where he felt more at home. But the pain did not go away. First he
had to watch Mr. Fujimori appropriate "my ideas and put my program for
governing into practice." Then, in April 1992, Mr. Fujimori closed Congress
and seized dictatorial powers, to the applause of many businessmen who had
backed Mr. Vargas Llosa's own campaign. Today, 58 years old and in
self-imposed exile, he is still rubbing the wounds of his political
misadventure.

Of course, even at the darkest moments of the campaign
there were those, both friends and foes, who predicted Mr. Vargas Llosa
would get a good book out of this. And he has. But it is not, as many
expected, a novel about a writer who tries to become president of a country
resembling Peru. Rather, with "A Fish in the Water," he has published a
fascinating and often bitter memoir in which he alternates chapters about
his early years with a blow-by-blow account of his presidential campaign.
And it serves as his mea culpa: he explains why the aspiring writer of the
1950's became a politician in the late 1980's and why, in the end, this was
a terrible mistake.

...

During his long years in Europe, Peru took on a new form
in his novels. But in time, as so often happens with Latin American writers,
his fame abroad required him to adopt political positions at home. Having
broken with the Fidel Castro regime in Cuba, he deepened the enmity of the
left by opposing the populist military regime that seized power in Peru in
1968. When democracy returned in 1980, he turned down President Fernando
Belaunde Terry's offer to become Prime Minister. Yet, spending more and more
time in Peru, he was gradually being sucked into its political vortex. By
the time he finally entered politics, the disastrous state of Peru had
become an obsession.

The catalyst was the nationalization of private banks by
President Alan Garcia Perez on July 28, 1987. Within one month, Mr. Vargas
Llosa was making his first political speech to a crowd that had gathered in
Lima's Plaza San Martin to oppose the bank seizure. "The story has it that
that night, on seeing on the little TV screen the magnitude of the Meeting
for Freedom, Alan Garcia, in a fit of rage, smashed the set to smithereens,"
Mr. Vargas Llosa writes. More important, that meeting set in motion a
conservative pro-business movement to rescue Peru from economic chaos and
Shining Path terrorism that looked to the novelist as its natural candidate
for the 1990 elections.

Soon, however, he discovered the seamier side of politics.
He allied his Freedom Movement to two existing conservative parties,
believing he needed their support, but infighting among the parties drove
him to distraction. His foes also proved adept at dirty tricks. They sent
thugs to disrupt his meetings. When he admitted he was agnostic, they
trumpeted that a heathen wanted to govern Roman Catholic Peru. Then there
was the campaign itself. He was expected to dive into crowds of slum
dwellers, to kiss Indian babies and to dance with market women. "I had to
accomplish miracles to conceal my dislike" for this kind of stumping, he
says. In truth, he didn't. Tall, white and well dressed, he invariably
looked out of place.

Yet, for all this, Mr. Vargas Llosa was the front-runner
through most of the campaign. Then, just 10 days before the first round of
voting on April 8, 1990, the Fujimori phenomenon struck. The agronomist son
of Japanese immigrants, Mr. Fujimori was unknown in political circles, but
he succeeded where Mr. Vargas Llosa failed: he presented himself as a truly
independent "anti-politics" candidate. And when the first-round results were
in, he had 24 percent of the vote, barely 5 points behind Mr. Vargas Llosa.
The novelist knew he had lost. Convinced that all other parties would unite
against him in the runoff, he was only dissuaded from pulling out by
warnings that it might provoke a military coup.

"If the electoral campaign had been a dirty one in the
first round, it was now an obscene one," he recalls. To his dismay, his own
followers introduced the racial question by arguing that Peru should only be
ruled by a "real Peruvian." But "El Chinito," as Mr. Fujimori was nicknamed,
turned this to his advantage, saying he belonged to the majority of
Peruvians of Indian, African and Asian extraction who had long been
dominated by whites like Mr. Vargas Llosa. Religion, too, featured in the
campaign, partly because the Catholic Church worried that Protestant
fundamentalists were backing Mr. Fujimori, partly because of Mr. Vargas
Llosa's agnosticism. But none of this made much difference. When the results
were in on June 10, Mr. Fujimori had won 57 percent of the votes against 34
percent for Mr. Vargas Llosa.

"A Fish in the Water," ably translated by Helen Lane, is,
of course, Mr. Vargas Llosa's story and not that of Peru. But it is no less
interesting for being so. He tells us relatively little about the misery and
violence convulsing the country that he aspired to govern. Instead, he
describes his own gradual discovery that, in politics, good intentions and
good ideas do not suffice. So why did he run for office? "For a moral
reason," he says. But, he concedes, his second wife, Patricia, had a
different explanation. "It was the adventure, the illusion of living an
experience full of excitement and risk," she said, "of writing the great
novel in real life."

As for the damage that Alberto Fujimori wrought to Peru, see
Wikipedia.

On September 27, the Taiwanese lecturer Jenny Wang was
assaulted. She had been holding classes to provide psychological
counseling. The surveillance video showed that the Tencent
vice-president Guo Kaitian leading several men dressed in black into Wang's
office. There were some physical shoving and Wang was assaulted.

According to Jenny Wang, she and her husband Xu Yiming
have held psychological counseling classes in Shenzhen for many years.
Guo Kaitian and his wife Chang Bin were students. At the end of three
years of attendance, the marital relationship between Guo and his wife
deteriorated, which Guo blamed on the class. He had brought his crew
several times to threaten Wang and Xu. After the September 27
incident, Wang and Xu flew back to Taiwan and wrote to the Taiwan Affairs
Office to demand protection of Taiwanese business people in mainland China.
Yesterday afternoon, Tencent told Southern Metropolis Daily that this was a
private matter for Mr. Guo who had procured a lawyer to pursue the matter
via legal means.

Yesterday, Xu Yiming and Jenny Wang explained the case via
telephone to the SMD reporter. Xu Yiming said that he and his wife had
been operating the Jonathan Culture Company for many years to provide
psychological counseling in Shenzhen. In 2007, Guo Kaitian and his
wife signed up. Guo attended one class and never came back. But
his wife Chang Bin continued to attend until July this year.

"We hope that she could get to know herself and address
her problems," Xu Yiming claimed. Guo and his wife had signed up for
the psychological counseling class in order to lessen family conflicts and
improve their martial relationship. Over the 84 classes in the three
years, Chang Bin refused to confront her problems. In class, she
insisted that she had a wonderful marital relationship. On the class
of July 31, Chang Bin even brought five sets of evening gowns to show the
lecturer and the students. She also displayed her precious jewelry to
show that everything is fine with her marriage. On that evening at the
graduation dinner, the lecturer Xu Yiming gave individual appraisals and
recommendations to each student.

"At first, I did not want to be so frank. But as
lecturer, I am obliged to point out these problems to her." Xu Yiming
said that Chang Bin had been excessively dependent on her husband to the
point of losing her own ego. He believed that this was her most
serious problem. At the graduation dinner, Xu Yiming responded to
Chang Bin's request for an appraisal plus recommendations by saying: "Your
husband is so handsome, rich and influential. You are quite plain.
You should think about just what it is about you that he loves?" Xu
Yiming said that as soon as he said that, Chang Bin turned hostile.

On the next day, Guo Kaitian brought several men to the
home of Xu Yiming in the Futian district. According to Xu, Guo
strongly condemned the psychological counseling course for causing his
martial relationship to deteriorate. Guo slapped Xu several times
before leaving. "If he thinks that I caused his marriage to
deteriorate and accuses me, I am willing to accept that responsibility."
Xu Yiming said that professional differences of opinion can be discussed,
but resorting to violence will only accentuate the conflict.

But the conflict did not end. On September 27, the
office of Xu Yiming and Jenny Wang was invaded. According to Jenny
Wang, when she arrived at the office, Guo Kaitian and several men dressed in
black assaulted her. The surveillance video showed that at 2:31pm on
that day, Guo Kaitian, his wife and several strong and powerful men dressed
in black entered the office. At 3:18pm, Jenny Wang arrived at the
office and was assaulted. One man dressed in black hit Jenny Wang in
the head with his hand. Guo Kaitian and his wife were worked up, but
were restrained by others from attacking Wang. Seven minutes, the
group left. According to Jenny Wang, Guo Kaitian hit her head but that
occurred in a blind spot for the surveillance camera.

Here is Jenny Wang's statement:

On September 27, 2010, I was on the way back to the
company office. From about 60 meters away, I saw Tencent
Vice-President Guo Kaitian and a group of individuals (nine persons),
including some unidentified men 1.8 meters tall entering the office.
Due to the previous incident in Beijing, I was worried. I called 110
for help, but I could not get through. I called the Yuanling police
station and I told them about the number of men who came and I asked them
to send people down because I was afraid.

About 8 minutes later, a company colleague called to say
that the police have arrived and I should come back. I asked: Did
the police ask the intruders who they were and what they were up to?
My colleague said: No, but the police are saying since I filed a report, I
need to come back. I thought that I would be safe with the police
there, so I went in. As soon as I stepped through the door, Guo
Kaitian hit me in the face. He kicked my body with his black leather
shoes. He and his wife Chang Bin assaulted me. Afterwards, I
approached the police officer and I said: "Are you doing to let them
assault me without doing a thing?" Guo and his group continued to
attack me. I told the police: "You are going to do nothing."
The policeman made no response. I asked for everyone to go down to
the police station, but they ignored me. I continued to be insulted
and attacked. I turned on the voice recording on my mobile phone.
But Guo Kaitian and his people spotted me and seized my mobile phone.
The police did nothing and let them assault me. Chang Bin said that
the attack on us in Beijing on September 11 were their doing as well.
She told us that we will be assaulted if we go to Beijing. And if
you are in Shenzhen, they will come and insult and attack us. The
police stood there and listened. I demanded the police for a medical
examination of my injuries. Then I spotted the group about to leave.
I told the police: "Are you going to let them leave like this?" The
police said: "There is a police car ready to take you down to the station
to make a statement." I said: "I will cooperate."

There was a police car downstairs with two police
officers in it. They took me down to the Yuanling police station to
take down my statement. During the process, I felt my body hurting
and I asked for a medical examination. A policeman said: "Most
people come here only if they are bleeding." I replied: "So I can't
come up here unless I am half dead?"

"We were afraid of further incidents, so we left."
Jenny Wang said that she and her husband went back to Taiwan that night.
According the medical report, Jenny Wang suffered a trauma injury on her
back as well as an eye injury.

Xu Yiming said that Guo and his wife may not understand
the difference between psychological counselors versus non-professionals due
to cross-strait cultural differences. In his view, psychological
counseling requires the identification of problems among the students.
However, the students and their relatives consider this to be
trouble-making. Xu did not think that his words and actions were
inappropriate. But for now, he is forced to stop his work on mainland
China.

According to the Futian police, the Yuanling police
station dispatched a police officer after receiving a report on September
27. There was a physical confrontation between Ms. Wang and several
men. Because the incident occurred so suddenly, the police could not
stop it immediately. In order to avoid further escalation, the police
removed Ms. Wang away from the office. At this time, the police have
asked Ms. Wang to provide an injury report. The police is
investigating the matter.

In Hong Kong, a father with two daughters were riding the
subway. An elderly woman came in and promptly sat down on the same row
of seats. The father used his mobile phone to make a video of the
elderly woman, uploaded it onto YouTube and criticized her. But his
action drew criticisms from other netizens for being disrespectful towards
senior citizens and setting a bad example for his children.

This video was uploaded on this past Sunday and has draw
tens of thousands of views since. At the start of the video, the
elderly woman is having a verbal repartee with the father, who criticized
her for being rude in taking a seat as soon as she got on. She said
that he, his two daughters and another girl had already taken the seats with
no room for anyone else. However, the elderly woman "leveraged her
age," ignored all reasoning and took over a space of her own.

The elderly woman said that the space was enough to seat
five persons and there were two young children. She criticized the
father for being disrespectful towards senior citizens and setting a bad
example. The two young girls tried to mediate but the father was
oblivious. He even instructed his daughters to vacate the entire row
for that elderly woman.

The father believed that he would gain the support of the
netizens when he uploaded this video. But instead he was shellacked
for magnifying a minor matter and being disrespectful towards senior
citizens. One netizen commented: "Not only did he set a bad example
for his daughters, but he thought that posting a video that purportedly
shows others in a bad light would make himself righteous and justified."

In the bicycle lane in Cheung Kwun O, a man seized the
hair of a woman, threw her against the wall and kneed her stomach.
Then he shoved her on the ground and assaulted her. She begged for
mercy but he did not relent. Spectators yelled at him. A
security guard interceded, and was cursed and kicked. The whole scene
was recorded and uploaded on YouTube under the title <Trashiest Man Of The
Century, He Keeps A Mistress And Beats His Wife In Public>. This video
was seen by more than 10,000 person within one day.

According to the police, a 39-year-old man named Chiu
assaulted his 37-year-old wife named Wu in Cheung Kwuon O at around 2pm on
October 1. A 39-year-old housing estate security guard named Ng
interceded but was wounded by Chiu. The couple left the scene.
Ng called the police who intercepted Chiu nearby. Chiu resisted
arrested and attacked the police officers. Chiu was subdued and
arrested on suspicion of fighting in public, physical assault and attacking
police officers. Ng, Li and a police officer were received treatment
at a hospital.

Yuan Ping, real name Yuan Lei, was born in Yiyang, Hunan
in 1981. He graduated from the Hunan University of Science and
Technology Department of Chinese and became a language teacher at the
Beijiao Middle School in Xunde, Foshan. Yuan Ping is regarded as a
popular excellent teacher at school.

Yuan Lei likes to write stories in his spare time.
He is fairly well-known at the Tianya Forum under the ID "Tianya Blue
Pharmacist." In July 2009, Yuan Lei began writing the novel <In
Dongguan> (also known as <Born in the 1980's -- Sleeping in Dongguan>.
He began posting sections of the work in progress at the Tianya Forum.
The novel was completed four months later. This online novel had 155
sections containing more then 390,000 words. Yuan Lei describes the
novel this way: "<In Dongguan> is about romance among those born in the
1980's amidst the sauna/sex business in Dongguan. It is humorous,
youthful and realistic. It shows a secret world that is unknown."

Yuan Lei's novel is carried at the Sina.com, Tianya
Forums, etc with a decent readership (more than 2 million hits at Tianya).
More than a dozen publishing houses contacted Yuan Yei to publish the book.
The book passed the first two rounds of censorship, but it has been stuck in
the third and last round. The Tianya Forum webmaster told Yuan Lei to
remove certain sensitive words and the new version of <Born in the 1980's --
Sleeping in Dongguan> is now known as <In Dongguan>.

On September 26, 2010, the Dongguan police came to the
Beijiao Middle School in Xunde and took Yuan Lei away on suspicion of
disseminating pornography. Yuan Lei was held at the Number Two
Detention Center in Dongguan city. His wife said that "the novel
contains no pornography -- it is merely a novel of critical realism."
Although the novel depicts the sauna industry in Dongguan, Yuan Lei had
never visited there. The police believed that the novel has damaged
the image of Dongguan because of its wide popularity and they intended to
hold the author criminally liable.

According to Yuan Fang, the wife of Yuan Lei, her husband
was taken away on the afternoon of September 26, 2010. She was not
unaware because she was in the middle of a meeting. A school leader
raced over to tell her that her husband has been taken away by the police.
She did not think that it was any big deal. During the meeting, she
sent text messages and made calls to her husband but received no answer.

After the meeting, Yuan Fang received a call from the
police to go down to the Beijiao police station. She saw Yuan Lei
there, but they were unable to speak to each other. That night, Yuan
Lei was taken to Dongguan.

According to "Spider 1," the Tianya webmaster, "this novel
describes city life in Dongguan, revealing the secrets of life at the saunas
and night clubs." The novel is "third-rate, possibly not up to the
publication standard, but it is very realistic." He believes that the
prevailing standards should classify the novel as literature and not
pornography. "<In Dongguan> is a work of literature, not a
pornographic story. The novel has erotic elements, but they are
expressed in highly literary terms. In movie terms, this is a Category
III movie and not an A (for adult) movie). If this were pornography,
we would have deleted it a long time ago."

Southern Metropolis Daily reached the renowned online
writer Murong Xuecun: "It is the most absurd thing in the world to be
arrested for writing a novel." Murong Xuecun said that when he wrote <Chengdu,
please forget me tonight>, the Chengdu authorities held a meeting to
criticize the novel; when his <Shenzhen to the left, paradise to the right>
was published, officials criticized it too.

"The fate of this author should also be my fate."
Murong Xuecun said that his novels also contain many realistic scenes and
places. If the Dongguan police think that the author of <In Dongguan>
was involved in the local sex trade, "then I ought to be arrested a long
time ago."

Murong Xuecun said that he was perplexed by a paradox.
If the novel is entirely fictional, then there should not be any trouble.
If the novel is realistic, "like me saying that there is a pile of dog feces
here but you won't clean it up -- instead the police goes out to arrest the
boy who said that the Emperor was not wearing new clothes. This
business is just incredible." He said that the constitution guarantees
that citizens have freedom of expression.

"I call on all the Internet users and intellectuals to pay
attention to this case." Murong Xuecun said that while he has not read
<In Dongguan>, he shares the same creative process as that author. "If
he can be arrested, I ought to be next."

At the Tianya Forum, this case has been pushed to the
forefront. <In Dongguan> was the number one search item there.

On the evening of September 29, the China Youth Daily
reporter contacted the Guangdong Province Public Security Bureau and the
Dongguan City Publicity Department. They had no comments on the case.
According to local Guangdong media, they were instructed not to report on
this case. But through a microblog post, the Guangdong police
indicated that the Dongguan police intends to verify the circumstances and
act according to the evidence.

At 11:00pm or so on September 29, Yuan Fang told the China
Youth Daily reporter that Yuan Lei just called: "Wifey, I can return home.
Wait for me at home. I estimate that it will take one or two hours."
At 1:30am on September 30, the Xiaoxiang Chenbao reporter reached Yuan Lei
who had returned home and saw his wife and child.

When asked whether he had been released without charge,
Yuan Lei said: "I have reached an agreement with Dongguan. I have
promised them not to discuss with the media what happened there. I
don't want to tangle with how the police reached their conclusion about me."

"The Dongguan police treated me well. Very
civilized. I did not suffer. I am in good health!" Yuan
Lei asked Xiaoxiang Chenbao to thank the media and the Internet users.
He said that he will be writing more non-controversial things in the the
future.

According to lawyer Zhou Ze, the microblog from the
Guangdong Province Public Security Bureau showed that the Dongguan police
arrested the suspect without first establishing that the novel was an
"obscene article." This was clearly against the procedures. Zhou
Ze said that the police should have established a crime had been committed
first before proceeding against the suspect. In this case, the
Dongguan police showed that "they can assume that you are guilty, arrest you
and then gather the evidence."